Courtney,

Once the corn borers are already inside the ears of corn, the only effective treatment is to open up the husk and physically remove the borer.

The three major pests of corn in Oklahoma are the Corn Earworm (aka the tomato fruitworm), the European Corn Borer and the Southwestern Corn Borer. The best way to combat these pests is to try to prevent them.

Planting corn early...near the date of the average last frost is one way to prevent pest problems since early corn will often mature before the pests hatch and begin feeding. Planting certain varieties of corn--like Merit or Silver Queen--that are known to have especially tight difficult-to-penerate husks will help prevent earworms from entering the ears.

Treating the cornsilks every three days with Bt, or applying mineral oil to the silks after pollination has occurred also helps keep the earworms from entering the tips of the ears.

Corn borers are especially difficult to treat because they can bore right through the husks and into the corn. You have to spray the ears with Bt every few days so that it will affect them when they start boring. It may take a couple of days to kill them, but they should stop feeding shortly after ingesting the Bt. And, of course, the Bt is a danger to every single caterpillar, butterfly and moth in the area, so you have to decide for yourself whether you want to use it or not.

One novel approach offered in the Gardens Alive! catalog is to purchase a syringe and inject Bt into the plants so that any pest biting into the plant ingests Bt. You can read about it at the Gardens Alive website. Some people say it works, others are not so sure. I have never tried it myself.

These pests make it incredibly hard to successfully grow corn organically. There probably are broad-spectrum chemical pesticides that you can spray on the plants to control or eliminate corn borers and corn earworms, but I don't know anything about them because I don't use them.

It is always disheartening to find the earworms and borers in the ears of corn. Sometimes you can cut away the damaged portions of the ears and salvage some of the corn, but sometimes you can't save enough to make it worthwhile.

Dawn

ARGH! I've already pulled out all the peas and most of the beans. I'm debating on pulling out the pumpkin and watermelon becuase of lack of fruit, and now it looks like I'm going to lose the corn. The only thing really flourishing is the cucumber LOL!! Maybe I'm just gonna have to learn to like cucumber this year :))

Well, now is the time to plant a fall garden, so think of all the cool stuff you can plant to replace the plants you are removing.

This has been a truly horrible spring and summer for veggies. Too much rain and prolonged cloudy, cool weather have them all messed up.

Speaking of cloudy and cool, our low temp early this a.m. was 61 degrees. Usually at this time of the year our low temps are around 80 degrees. No wonder the plants are all acting crazy--they are confused!

You're so good at finding that "silver lining" :))) I was reading the seed packet for the corn this morning and it was a Long season sweet corn, avg 68 days to maturity, and I planted them in Late April... so I'm betting that since I only have one or two ears that are 6-8" long, they have all been stunted by the corn borers.

I'll go back to your fall planning thread and look for some more veggies that I like and get some of those started this week. Should I add some more humus and manure when I'm tilling up the area since the compost isn't ready yet? I'm going to assume that the corn, beans and peas have leached all of the nutrients out of the soil already and it needs to be replaced.

Also, for the cover crops (hairy vetch and rye) where do you find seeds? I have checked online and at the nearby feed store and the smallest quantity I can find is a five pound bag of seeds! That'll last me a life time!!

This is SoCal weather that we're having, cool dewey mornings, and hot afternoons, followed by breezy cool evenings. I'm really loving it!! Except for the flies!!!
DH has decided that the house fly is the OK State bird.

Courtney

My corn was slow this year too. I think that the cooler and wetter weather worked against it. If I plant a super early corn like "Early Sunglow" in mid- to late-March AND if a late freeze doesn't get it, I will often have corn that is ready to eat by Memorial Day weekend. That early crop is the only one that tends to suffer NO damage from corn earworms or borers.

I add compost and manure to my soil in the fall/winter most years and don't add much if any when planting the fall garden--partly this is because the mulch breaks down and feeds the soil all summer long. However, since your beds are new this year, it wouldn't hurt to add humus and manure.

I get seeds from a feed store that has open bins so you can get a little or a lot. If you can't find a store in your area that sells it that way, buy the 5 lb bag., use what you need, and store the rest of it in one of those popcorn tins or something similar. The tightly sealed tin should prolong the seed's viability and you ought to be able to use it for several years.

I AM loving this weather....although our morning temp yesterday morning was 63 or 64 degrees when I looked at the porch thermometer, our official low was 61 degrees. What's not to like about that?

The flies are often pretty bad...but not usually this bad!
I have a funny fly story.

Our second year here, we built a screened-in porch on the west (back) side of the house. We usually leave the porch door open so the cats can come and go in order to eat and sleep on the porch. So, with the screened-in porch door open, all kinds of bugs--especially butterflies, moths, wasps and flies congregate on the back porch. A lot of the time they seem unable to find the open door and leave the porch, so they drop dead in the corners.

During DS's high school years they had to make a bug collection as one of their biology projects. Our screened-in porch (and my garden, as well) was a VERY popular place with his classmates because we always had LOTS and LOTS of bugs. A student could spend an hour or two on our porch and in our garden and have enough bugs to complete the assignment. What did I learn from this? (a) It is very hard to identify flies online, and (b) there are a LOT of different kinds of flies here, and (c) everyone kept finding and catching a specific variety of the southern robber fly, which is considered rare and endangered. LOL If they are so rare, why did we have so many????

I always wondered if the biology teacher wondered why all those kids were able to catch a supposedly 'rare' fly?

Dawn

LOL!! That is too funny. I can remember doing something similar in HS. We had a small parcel of land just outside of town that was a preserved piece of natural prarie (the only one on the eastern side of NE). It had been undisturbed for hundreds of years. I loved going through there and seeing all the natural grasses and flowers. When I went home in June, I noticed that they had leveled the area to make way for some new apartment buildings. The town had built up all around it, and I don't think very many residents considered it much more than an overgrown field. Pretty sad.

The local feed store sells the seeds in 50 pound bags, so I'll have to keep checking around or go the online route. I'm sure if I get a little further away from the city, I should be able to find something.

This weather is definately been easy to handle. It's so chily out this morning, I had to go back inside and get a sweatshirt on. I can usually handle the heat, but I don't do very well when it gets chilly. I have a hard time warming back up.

The kids have been really upset with me lately, I turn off the A/C in the mornings and sometimes the house will get up to 82-84 degrees before I'll turn it back on. I spend the day outside, so when I come in it does feel a bit cooler than the outside, the teenage "couch weights" just sit and complain about it being a sauna. I keep telling them to come out and work with me, but that's just "stupid" LOL!! To be a teenager again!

Courtney

Courtney,

I hate to think of all the diversity of plant and small animal life that was lost when that 'overgrown pasture' was leveled to make way for new apartment buildings. Undisturbed prairie is so terribly rare any more, and once it is gone, it's gone forever. We have a tiny pocket of what I believe is undisturbed prairie located between our overflow pond, the swamp and the creek. I have found plants there that exist nowhere else on our property!

If you have to go the online route, Peaceful Valley Farm Supply has a marvelous selection of wonderful cover crops and green manure crops. Of course, it would be nice if you didn't have to pay shipping, but that seems more and more common these days as local sources seem harder and harder to find.

I am beginning to think we aren't going to break 100 degrees around here this summer. If so, that will be the first time since we moved here in 1999 that we won't have a summertime high in the 100s. Of course, it makes up for some of the years when we had way too many days over 100 degrees!

I hope your teenage 'couch weights' are enjoying summer and their break from school because it is about to end! When I was a kid, school started after Labor Day. Now our local schools start in mid-August. Of course, our schools back then weren't air conditioned either.

I no longer have a 'child' in school, and you wouldn't believe how much I miss it! The retail companies start running all those back-to-school ads and I am all ready to go school clothes shopping and also to stock up on those school supplies....and I have no students for whom to shop!
I never thought I would miss that, but I do.

I've been enjoying the lower electric and water bills, although DS and DH like the house much cooler than I like to keep it. When they are both gone, I turn the AC off, but when they come home they turn it right back on.

I've been out in the yard a lot this week since the temps have been so pleasant and it is mostly dry out there now.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Peaceful Valley Farm Supply website

LOL! I too, believe the house fly is Oklahoma's state bird! LOL! Last year we were in Independence, KS and went to a sandwich shop there for lunch. There was a baggie hanging outside near the picnic tables with water and a penny in it. I asked one of the girls there, "What the heck is that for?" and she said that it scares the flies away. Apparently flies are afraid of wasps and they don't see very well so they see the bag with water and a penny and think it's a wasps nest. Has anyone ever heard of this? I tried it at home and it seemed like it worked but it could've been just a coincidence that we had fewer flies around at the time. Opinions, anyone?

Ilene,

I have never tried it, but there are people here who swear by it.

A similar folk remedy for keeping rabbits out of the garden is to put canning jars filled with water around the garden to repel the rabbits. It seems to work, more or less, although I am not sure why.

If you add a little molasses to the water in the canning jars, and only fill them halfway, grasshoppers will go down into the jars to get the sweet water and will then drown. I have quite a bit of success controlling grasshoppers that get into the garden using the jars of water.

I grow tansy in the garden and tansy is said to repel flies. Sometimes I cut long stalks of tansy after it has flowered, and tie the stalks together and hang them by the exterior door. Sure enough, we seem to have fewer flies getting into the house when I do that.

Dawn

Hmmmm... I'm gonna have to try that penny trick and see if it works. DH bought a fly trap caled Rescue. It's caught hundreds of flies so far, but it smells like a garbage truck, so there's no way it's coming inside!

I've never heard of tansy. I'll have to try that one next spring. I took some of the Balsam seeds and added them to the veggie garden. Don't know if they'll do much more than attract bees, which is all I'm hoping for to help pollinate the toms after they blooms. Hopefully I timed it right :))

Courtney

Courtney,

Tansy is one of those old-fashioned herbs that you hardly see any more. I love all those oldies but goodies!

I raised it from seed planted about 6 or 8 years ago. I only got a handful of plants that first year, but they reseed somewhat prolifically so I have had tansy every year. Because they reseed, I never know where they will come up.....usually in the pathway or in the flower border downhill from their location, so either wind or rain or both is probably transporting seeds around.

The flowers are sort of yellow and flat, a bit like yarrow, which happens to grow right next to it in my garden. I use the tansy and yarrow to attract beneficial insects, including bees and other pollinators, to the garden.

If you like to cut and dry flowers and use them later in flower arrangements, tansy and yarrow both are great for that.

Tansy is said to repel flies, as I mentioned in the earlier post, and I believe that it does. Tansy is mostly used as an insect repellent type of herb. It is great to put on the compost pile, too, because its leaves are full of potassium.

Next year I am going to add feverfew to the bed where I have tansy, yarrow, chamomile and a few other herbs that attract bees.

Dawn

Dawn, I grew the fernleaf tansy for a few years and then it just died out. Don't know why. Anyway, it can be invasive, so I didn't replace it.

Flies! OMG! The Lord of the Flies is living on my block I swear! They are horrible this year. I have two flyswatters and I just get mad as a hatter when I'm going thru the house trying to get them all. Inside, outside, under, over, and every which way but loose - there are the ubiquitous flies!

Oh, and destruction of pasture and wildflowers? Don't get me started you guys! You know how much I hate that. They are destroying so much of our wildlife habitat it's not funny. At this rate, we won't have any wildlife to worry about eventually. That's why I encourage everyone to plant, plant, plant for the butterflies, moths, and beneficials.

I spent this morning picking milkweed beetles (slimy looking things) off my milkweed. They really had a chowdown last night. I'm getting less and less squeamish about just picking those nasty things, and the orange oleander aphids on the milkweed, too. It's so easy to just squeeze your thumb and forefinger together, leaving about 1/3" space between them, grasp and squeeze the dickens out of em!!

Corn borers! EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! I remember when my daddy raised corn and we used to find them when we were shucking the ears! There are lots more predators and bad, bad bugs this year than I've seen before - essentially due to so much moisture. It's a breeding ground for beasties!

My 'maters are looking SOOOOO good, though. I have huge clusters. I didn't stake them and I should have - I think I'll start sitting some pots underneath because the branches are so heavy with fruit, the tomatos are literally sitting on the ground. And, yuuummmmmmmm! They taste so good. I didn't plant them for me really, but ME is enjoying them anyway.

Happy Birthday to the Little Guy, Courtney! We need to get together some time.....maybe in the fall, when I can bring you some plants and seeds.

Susan

Susan,

I think tansy must be one of those short-lived perennials that lasts about 3 to 5 years and then dies because all of mine die after about 3 to 5 years. However, since they reseed so easily, I always have new plants around to replace them. Seven of last year's eight plants did not come back.....but then I quit watering in late June 2006 so a lot of stuff did not come back! However, the one surviving plant is strong and vigorous, and there were plently of baby plants that sprouted in March or April too.

I have never noticed milkweed beetles on the plants in the garden or pasture, but they are probably there. One advantage of being surrounded by thousands of acres of pasture land is that there's tons of milkweed in those pastures so the pests have a lot of food sources to pick from and do not get out of hand on 'my' milkweed.

Have the ladybugs shown up in decent numbers to eat the aphids? I have fewer ladybugs this year than usual, and am not sure where they have gone because I had tons earlier in the year. For a while they were in the fruit trees and the pasture and I was seeing them a lot, but am not seeing them lately.

This does seem to be prime time for insect pests. I have been seeing a lot of squash bugs, stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs and grasshoppers. All these bugs are keeping the chickens and guineas busy for sure. We also are having HUGE numbers of crickers, which is normal in a rainy summer, of course, but so annoying. They are coming into the fire station by the dozens and dying and piling up on the floor....and they stink!

I am so glad that you are enjoying your tomatoes too! Are you seeing lots of hornworms? Mine are coming in waves this year. This week I saw a huge tomato hornworm cat on one tomato plant which it had nearly defoliated. That cat must have been at least 3" long. I also have seen some small tobacco hornworm cats in the flower border.

Usually at this time of year we are seeing a lot more hummingbird moths out and about in the evenings. We are seeing SOME, but not as many as usual. There are fewer hummingbirds and bats as well, so maybe it is the weather?

We do have endless amounts of frogs, toads, dragonflies and damsel flies, so we've been enjoying watching them.

Dawn

I'll have to give tansy a try. I think I have the squash bugs under control. I haven't seen any more eggs or bugs in a couple weeks. (Although, I bet I just jinxed it and they'll return in droves tomorrow!)

I'm still trying to collect seeds from everything to try to multiply my plants. I have very little patience though, and I want it all to grow NOW! :)) I keep having to calm myself, thinking "This time next year...." I think I am going to get a bunch of crocus and muscari bulbs though to get that tree bed looking happy in the spring. Most of the other plants that I have in there are summer flowering, and I really need to see some pretty colors earlier next year. Maybe then it won't be depressing.

Susan, where do BST's pupate? I have seen several of them become mature cats, but when I go out the next day, they're gone. I haven't seen any chrysallis' either. Do they dig underground? Or could they be turning in a meal for the frog family living nearby? I did have another BST come and lay a bunch more eggs again today, so maybe I'll try to rescue a few cats next time before they pupate, then the little man can see them emerge.

I finally got a good look at my giant yellow and black butterfly. It is definately the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail. It finally rested on the phlox long enough for me to get a good look at it, and a few minutes later what I think was a female ETS came over to the same area. It kinda looked like the BST only much larger! I read that they host on Willow, so I checked the willow tree and there is a cat on there, but I think it might be something else. It looks like a Viceroy cat - even though I have yet to see a Viceroy or a Monarch in the yard.

Dawn, you know, I've only seen a handful of lady bugs here too. I really expected to see quite a few more. I wonder why they are so scarce? I'm sure the weather has something to do with it. I do have tons of bumble bees though. The little man likes to thank them for the honey whenever he sees one. He's so funny!

Susan, Let me know when you have time. The little guy starts his Mother's Day Out again in late August, so I'll be able to meet you for lunch or something after he goes back to "school". I'd never heard of that program until we moved here, and I love it! With him being so much younger than his siblings, he needed someone his own age to play with and the MDO programs are so inexpensive that it was the perfect fit for us. He really likes it there too.

Courtney

Courtney,

I had to release lady bugs here for a couple of years in order to build up a good population, but since then we have always had tons and tons of them.

Usually I see them all over everything--but in spurts. This year I haven't seen nearly as many nor have I seen them as often.

I bet when cold weather rolls around this fall, though, I will have thousands and thousands of them trying to find their way into the house, garage/barn and screened-in back porch to overwinter. If so, I'll know we still have a healthy population. If not, I'll know I need to release more of them next spring. (Some lady bugs always manage to make their way inside the house and I vaccum them up and release them outside unharmed.)

Lady bugs go where the food is. So, if my yard and garden are not supplying them with enough food, they will migrate somewhere else to 'follow the food', so to speak. I don't have a lot of aphids or mites or any of the smaller bugs they like to eat, so my best guess is they have gone off to find food. However, most years, even if I am not seeing many of them, they will magically appear as soon as aphids or mites reach a certain level on the plants.

Thus, not having lady bugs around should actually be considered a good sign as it ought to indicate that the bug population level is low and under control. Still, I worry when I am not seeing many of them.

I am seeing way more grasshoppers than I have in years, but the guineas will take care of them in short order since one guinea can eat two pounds of grasshoppers a day.

Dawn

Well, I guess not having the ladies around is a good thing then :) I saw aphids on my tropical Hibiscus last week, but since they will be moved inside I got rid of the aphids ASAP.

I've seen a few grasshoppers, but more than anything I'm seeing dragonflies! It's not unusual for us to sit on teh patio and count 15-20 of them flying overhead. I'm pretty sure they are keeping the mosquito population in check. I have yet to get a mosquito bite this year. DH and DS aren't being bit anymore, so I guess the dragonflies have been feasting.

Courtney

Hi Bizzy!

I love, love, love those dragonflies! Sometimes if we hold out a finger while sitting quietly in a lawn chair in the evening, they will fly over and land on that finger and just sit there a while. Until we moved here, I had never had a chance to just sit and watch the dragonflies all that much. Now, if something happens and they are not around much (like last year's drought, which dried up all the ponds), I really miss them.

Dawn

I have to say, I've had more dragonflies and damselflies this year than ever before and that MUST be because of all our rain. Especially with me living in the city, too - I rarely see them. I remember seeing lots of them on the lakes and river back home, but not in OKC. Some of them have been absolutely gorgeous - a big red furry one (I mean this sucker was BIG!); the blue ones, the brown ones, and the black ones. Beautiful!

Courtney, when your caterpillars get big enough and are ready to pupate, they will wander off the host plant to find another location to form the chrysalis. Sometimes they will wander fairly great distances, too. They blend in with plants by forming a green chrysalis, and blend in with fence posts, decks, and brown twigs, by forming a brown chrysalis. They wander away so they will not be on the plant where the odor of the food plant remains, and their frass (poop) as well. It's another method they utilize to avoid predators. After the chrysalis is formed, all of the catepillars organs reduce to liquid, and then it reconstitutes as a butterfly. Wasps are known in particular, for attacking chrysalis's to suck the liquid from them. Hence, they go off elsewhere away from the food source and odor.

Your Eastern Tiger could have been another female, but usually Tiger females are smaller and I've only seen the black form female lately. The black form female tiger swallowtail closely resembles the black swallowtail and pipevine swallowtail. But, if you ever see a black swallowtail flying with or breeding with a yellow tiger, it is a black form female Tiger. Confusing, I know.

Spiders are another thing I am seeing a lot. Spiders are EVERYWHERE! Overnight, they build a web across from the flower bed to the pine tree, and from a potted plant to the rose shrub, or from the Joe Pye Weed to the front porch. They are all over my passion vines, where they hide in wait until the Gulf Frits lay eggs and they gobble them up. I try to remove as many as I can, plus I take the eggs and put them in the GF container. I have about 50 caterpillars. But, jiminy Christmas - they are on the ground, webs across the plants and grass, trees, you name it. I've made a point to check early in the a.m. and again at night for eggs and tiny cats, trying to get them safely inside before a spider finds them.

I have a few ladybugs. Like you, Dawn, I had a lot more in spring. I find a few eating the oleander aphids, along with the hoverfly larvae, lacewings, and ladybug larvae, too. So far, I haven't seen the assassin bugs yet. Grrrrr! I hope I don't. I do not like them, no I don't.

I have two hummers - either black-chinned or female Rubies. I don't know which. But, they are so tiny. They have irridescent green on their backs, and 3 white spots on their outer tail feathers. Do you know hummers? Anyway, I've been feeding them, plus they've been nectaring on everything from the zinnias, to the lantana, to the passion flowers (they really love those), to the verbena bonariensis - they're not picky at all. I have some sparse honeysuckle blooms and they like them, too, but they love to just sit in the knarly branches of the honeysuckle tree. They don't fly all the time - they have their favorite perches. They are so darned cute! I put out the rotten bananas for the butterflies, which also draws the fruit flies, and the hummers go crazy over them.
I've never had hummers before and I'm loving them.

Did I tell you about my tomato volunteer? It's a yellow pear from last year's planting. It just came up near where I had them planted last summer. I didn't know they would reseed!

Courtney, Viceroys and Red Spotted Purples use Willow as well. Their caterpillars look like bird droppings. Does it resemble that? I've got a couple of black willow saplings and Wild Cherry saplings, and I was sure hoping I would get some, but not yet so far.

Susan

Susan, I went to one of the websites you had linked for me a while ago, and that helped me ID the cat on the willow. It definately looked like the Viceroy or Red Spotted Purple. My daughter goes out to check the tree daily to see if she can find him and if he's pupated yet. She's dying to see a butterfly emerge. We also found a chrysalis on one of the tall sedum stems that had flopped over after the termites started attacking them. We're checking it a couple time a day to see if we can catch it coming out.

I'm happy to know that the BST's are pupating elsewhere. I was wrried that the little frog family may have gotten them! Momma came by and laid 15 more eggs. They really liked that Dill!! The 5 little plants that I bought look like sticks right now. The fennel and parsely have barely been touched.

Courtney

Susan,

We are having a lot more spiders, or at least they are a lot more visible this year. After we moved here, and I realized I was seeing tons of spiders daily, I did a little research and found that an acre of 'wildland' like the land we bought can have from one to two MILLION spiders per acre. I don't doubt those numbers at all, as we have spiders of all sizes, shapes and colors everywhere.

I am not sure if there are more of them this year, but think that probably is the case. They are building webs everywhere....even in more open areas where we don't usually see webs. I'm guessing that we have more of all the bugs due to the rainy weather, and the spiders are coming out in droves to prey upon all the bugs.

It is so hard sometimes to distinguish between ruby-throated and black-chinned hummers, but I think the white spots on the tails tend to be seen more commonly on female rubies OR on young males rubies.

The black-chinned hummers I see here (and they are much less common here than ruby-throated hummers) are generally different from the rubies in that the females have a slightly longer bill than the rubies and are darker, greyer or 'dirtier' looking in the underpart area. Still, it can be hard to tell them apart at certain life stages.

We have hummers here from approx. April through September, with the largest numbers seen during the August-September migration. I love them. They nest in some of the smaller trees in our woods....and if you are walking along the edge of the woods and are too close to their nest, they will fly around and around your head in circles trying to drive you away from the nesting area.

I keep several feeders scattered about....including one right outside the kitchen window...and also plant lots and lots of plants for them. Our hummers perch on the power lines, the fences, the tomato cages, the tops of arbors, even on the drip irrigation line that runs along the porch ceiling to water the hanging baskets. If I turn on a misting line or sprinkler on a hot day, the hummers fly through the water repeatedly. I am not sure if they are bathing or just playing, but is is fun to watch.

I have a t-shirt that is a red poppy print--nothing but life-sized red poppies. If I wear it outside during the hummingbird season, I constantly have hummingbirds trying to come 'feed' at the red flowers. It is hysterical.

Hummers are VERY attracted to our huge red barn/garage. They swoop down to it and get inside of it and then I have a heck of a time getting them out of it. Usually, in order to lure them out, I have to close all the doors but one, and then hang my red poppy t-shirt and a hummingbird feeder in that doorway to lure them to it. Once they come down to the door, they usually eat at the feeder and then leave the building.

Sometimes the hummers follow me right into the house, which drives me crazy because I am afraid a cat will get them. Once inside, they like to sit on a ceiling fan blade and ride around in circles. As I always say, around here it is always either a zoo or a circus......

Dawn

I just read on the Hummingbird Forum that the hummers were flying into people's garages with the red handles on them? They were painting the handles a flat black in order to keep them from doing that, because they sometimes get in, won't come out of the garage, and die there. Sad, huh?

I think my two hummers are juveniles from the eggs layed earlier this spring. I think they only have one brood a year, don't they, and usually only 1 or 2 babies? They are such fun to watch - I can watch them for hours and hours. My hamelis patens (firebush) is just now coming into bloom, and my Swamp Hibiscus just started blooming a couple of days ago. The hummers finally found it today and were nectaring like crazy on it. Also found a "slug" caterpillar on one of the flowers. Don't know what it is - probably a moth. Don't think it is a hairstreak, but I left it there because I don't think they get big. If it's a moth, it's probably one of the stinging caterpillars and I didn't want to mess with it too much.

I think these hummers are female rubies because they don't have a black chin, for one thing. I thought I saw one about 2 weeks ago that did have a black chin, but since then, just the others. I love em and I hope they come back next year. I always have 1 every year about this time, but this year, I had 2. I'm wondering if Mama had 2 babies this year, and 1 in previous years. They do seem to come back to the same locations, don't they?

You're in the country, so I bet you get tons and tons of them, fighting for territory at the feeders? My sister does, too. They can really go at it, can't they?

Susan