Those Lovely Ladies

While watering the babies on the front porch today, I saw a terrible sight - gobs of aphids nestled into the tips of the little mums. Time for a little help from my friends...

The past few days, I've noticed a pretty significant population explosion of lady bugs. While pulling weeds in the back yard I actually have to check the plants so I don't squish them. They seem to be everywhere and thick. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Either they really enjoyed the unusual spring moisture or somebody released them and they all came to my house! I even spotted some in the front lawn this evening.

When I saw the aphids, I went out back and caught a few of them. Several hours later, they were still trekking around the mums.

I was thinking I should mow the back weed-patch (we don't have a lawn back there yet) but I'm afraid it would be a lady-massacre if I did. For now, I'm just going to pull the tall and weediest looking stuff. We don't have many manicured back yards out here so if I don't mow, I won't offend my neighbors.

We are also having a population explosion of Miller Moths it seems.
http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4dmg/Pests/millers.htm

Although CSU says the population is normal this year , http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/moths.html
they were the topic of a short blurb on the news tonight. These guys are everywhere at my house right now. When I open my front door, a flurry of moths come flying out. I've got them bouncing into the windows, flying into the shower, dying on the floor but I think the worst was when I put a loaf of bread into the 450* oven the other day, one must have been hiding behind the towel hanging on the oven door. I opened the door, he flew in. He didn't make it back out (well he did, but it was on the end of a spatula - something about fresh bread in a steamy oven with a moth at the bottom didn't seem yummy...).

I was happy to hear that they should only be hanging around here for another week or so.