Loveliness

[bigtree]

Dan Rather @DanRather 14h14 hours ago

On a walk with my grandson a group of ladybugs lighted upon us. It was delightful and I realized I haven't given the mysterious world of insects enough heed. I vow to change that. Did you know a group of ladybugs is called a "loveliness?" How poetic. How true. How perfect.



(Robert Deutsch)

[Farmer-Rick]

1. He seems to give the mysterious world of fish plenty of heed.

And he decided to catch them with hooks....maybe he should stay away from the ladybugs.

[Hortensis]

2. Rather is fly fishing, so chances are excellent that he's using

barbless hooks. In fact, those are mandated in some places. You can think fishermen for those laws and many many environmental efforts to save fish while you were tending to the things you care about.

[bigtree]

3. depends on what he's fishing for

“Could an angler go fishing without a fishing rod, line and hook? It depends what they’re fishing for.”
― Fennel Hudson

[Hortensis]

4. Lovely and charming, Bigtree. Speaking of the mysterious

world of insects, we just had a loveliness of ladybugs in our living room. Why? I don't know. We removed some screens to help them take their mystery elsewhere.

[bigtree]

5. shelter from the winter

Aleš Šteger:

“Hundreds of ladybugs had taken shelter from the winter in the crevices of the decayed windows. From there, they broke into the apartment in commando squads. My joy at that first sighting of the ladybug spreading its lower winglets on the rim of the jam glass, flashing three spots of fortune, soon turned into something tragic and Greek, a bloodied slaughter. Like in Ajax, I had to pluck ladybugs from my toothbrush every evening and in the morning shake out my shirt that, overnight, was infested with too much luck, and at lunch, I'd fish kamikazee-ladybugs out of my soup bowl, their Etna's crater in the middle of the round kitchen table. When I shut my eyes and held the hose to my ear and heard the little crackle of tiny bodies sucked into the eye of the tornado, I couldn't remain neutral. Putting away the vacuum, I consoled myself with sentences of friends who, after a beer or three, like to repeat to me the axiom that sooner or later, living in the city, each person discovers himself to be the murder of his own happiness. They were genuine Berlin ladybugs, they'd occupied the windows illegally like my friends in apartments from which they were later evicted.”

[pazzyanne]

6. There are Asian Beetles masquerading as "native ladybugs" in the upper midwest.

Asian Beetles have a white M on their pronotum (the black part between head and wings) and native ladybugs do not. Asian beetles are invasive, aggressive, and invade homes. They leave a yellow fluid that stinks! A friend of mine vacuumed an unusually large number that were in her house. She stuffed tissue paper in the vacuum wand to contain them. A couple of days later, there was a horrible smell in her house. Turns out it was the Asian beetles. A group of native ladybugs is a loveliness, a group of Asian lady beetles in your house is a mess.

We also have a native ladybug in our area called a pink ladybug. This is my favorite ladybug and I protect them when they take up residence in my garden. When we were kids we played ranch with lady bugs being cattle and pink ladybugs being horses. Probably why they became my favorites.

[Hortensis]

7. Okay, both of you. :) Good info, thanks. I'm happy to

be able to report, with some relief, that these were native in the deep south. Also that we don't have decayed sills, but they're clearly resourceful little things and it did just turn cold here.

[NJCher]

8. ladybug story

I moved from a townhouse condo to an old carriage house back on a private road on a mountain 20-some years ago, and I moved because I wanted more garden space. The day we moved in we found ladybugs in the back bedroom window. As a gardener, I was so thrilled because every gardener wants ladybugs. They eat aphids and other predators to one's plants, plus they are...cute. Is there any bug cuter than a ladybug?

Not only that, but on our way to our new property one night we had a find that was quite fortuitous. This was during the first week we were there. Someone had put out on the curb an old wheelbarrow, watering can, and a few other ancient garden tools--all in good shape, but very old. The carriage house which we bought was built in 1875, so this seemed appropriate.

Many years later a friend's son (from Long Island) used to stay in a bedroom on my second floor when the weather was too bad for him to drive from NJ to LI to his home. He was a student. One night he announced that there were some ladybugs on the window and that he'd killed them. I was not happy about this, but only told him bad luck comes to those who kill ladybugs.

The next time the weather was bad and he had to stay with us, he told me that on his next trip home after I'd told him that, his car had stopped in the middle of the bridge. Mechanical failure. Who wants a car failure on gigantic bridges like the Triboro or the Throg's Neck? Dangerous, and nerve-wracking. I shudder, just thinking of it.

He attributed it to killing ladybugs.

[bigtree]

9. it's a farmer, gardener thing

...bad for the crops, etc.

I think he might be on to something with the bad weather, and all.

...btw, I could use a ladybug, or two, as the butterfly weed I overwintered indoors has developed a community of aphids.

[NJCher]

11. aphids are easy

Just take to your kitchen sink and spray the plant with a nozzle. Do this once a week until they stop appearing. You can also take a little dishwasher soap and add some water and spray the plant. The stickiness keeps the aphids from moving and then they die.

However it would be so much easier if a ladybug just came along, right?

[bigtree]

12. I took the smaller pots to the tub already

...couldn't move a few others in a larger planter snugged in behind the other plants.

I ended up crushing all I could see by hand, even the washed ones had hangers on. I think I'll step up from the insecticidal soap though, to something soapier. The last bottle seemed to do nothing at all.

Oh, ladybug, where are you!

[bigtree]

10. kick