Recovery in the garden

It is now a week since those pesky little bugs invaded my garden and I am sure there are a few of you who are wondering just what sort of devastation is left behind. The pictures I will include in this post will show you that all is well. The dahlias and ground plants have made an amazing recovery - they are still producing flower buds and fresh leaves so I knew that I would not have to wait for very long before I saw an improvement. The crepe myrtle tree had a few little buds that avoided the jaws of the voracious beetles and have provided a faint tinge of colour to the almost stripped tree. This is what it looks like today.

I just wish that I could show you how wonderful it looked before the insects arrived. It was a mass of colour and you couldn't see many of the leaves. Never mind. at least the bugs did not arrive as early as they did a few years ago (they do not swarm like this every year, I have been living here 30 years and this is the third time they have come) That time the flowers had only just appeared and the tree was about a third of the size it is now. This time around we had enjoyed the flowers for about a week and it was when they were at their peak that the bugs arrived.
The dahlias - well I have pulled off the eaten leaves and cut off the dead heads so there is no evidence of their trauma left at all.

Two tubers of these dahlias were given to me by my next door neighbour four years ago and I have lifted them and planted them out each year after giving them time to rest and now I have hundreds of them - if you can see the slope of the path in the background of the top one of these two pictures (click on the photo to make it easier to see) you may be able to see plants beside the post and tree and bush - I have planted even more tubers down that edge of our block. They were planted much later so they will be flowering after these ones in the foreground have finished.
What happened to the rose?

The rose was pruned below the damaged area - it is on the right of this picture, at the front, it has since had two new flowers and you may be able to see the red new growth appearing just above my signature. So the rose has recovered too.
I did despair of my flowering gum. It certainly looked as if the bugs had climbed right inside the cups that hold the flowers and eaten everything - but one branch managed to escape the invaders - incredibly the swarm was in a distinct strip across the garden and some plants were totally unaffected while others were ruined (or so I thought.). Here is the surviving flowering branch of my gum tree (Eucalyptus).

So, with a lighter heart I wander around my garden - there is still the odd beetle to be seen but I am not one to use sprays and the birds and lizards and frogs and things are working hard to keep the garden looking good. We have recently added a huge white crane to the birds that check out my flowering part of the garden and I would imagine that he would eat plenty of bugs and nasties! He would stand as high as the shoulders of my seven year old granddaughter! What a magnificent creature!
AJ

Heartbreak in my garden

This morning when I was having breakfast out on the veranda - as I do every day - I gazed around from this high vantage point to admire the colour that is in my garden. My spoon dropped into my dish as I spied the crepe mytle. Beside the driveway the crepe mytle was in full bloom, better than it has ever been before - smothered with the deepest cherise coloured flowers. This morning it was brown! A layer of petals lay on the gravel below but not one petal remained on the tree. I left my breakfast and rushed down to take a closer look. Sure enough the flowers had all gone and there was no evidence as to why - until I looked down to the flowers below. Resting on all the green leaves were the culprits - small orange beetles (with very full tummies).
There is nothing to be done. There is no point spraying when the damage is done.
I walked across the drive to see if any of the flowers over there had been touched. This is what greeted me.

The first thing I noticed was one of my miniature roses - it has decided to be a large rose and has grown quite vigorously and now is about waist high but still with miniature roses on it. The grubs obviously like the sweet soft wood of the growing tip as well as the pretty roses. Click on the photos to see the damage more clearly.
Then I looked over at the big dahlias that are creating such a dramatic splash of colour in the garden and they too look a real mess. Here are a couple of photos of two of them - I wont upset you by telling you how many flowers are like this.

I was so mad that I went inside and grabbed a can of flying insect spray and sprayed the flower heads. One squirt made the outside insects drop straight away and twice as many that were deep in the petals came crawling out to escape. I know that I am not solving the problem at all - there are more insects in the trees and grass and the entire garden but I took real pleasure in attacking these ones! I do not normally use any insecticides on my garden - I rely on nature to provide the control so I have plenty of birds, insects and lizards and spiders and so on that do no harm at all and I do not want to destroy them. I shall be back outside tomorrow with a pair of secateurs to cut off all the dead flowers to make sure that they do not continue to poison the insects!
Just before dark I decided to take a look at another part of the garden - I remembered that there was a small crepe myrtle that I had grown from a cutting of the first one by the drive. Sure enough, no petals on that - but the horrible little invaders were smothering the leaves so I just had to call out the rest of the family to come and take a look. I dashed inside for the camera but had to use flash since it was almost dark. Take a look at these beasties.

They were as thick as this throughout the garden - so you can see how pointless it would be for me to try and spray them all! I hope that they do not stay very long now they have cleaned my garden - do you realise that they have even started eating the geranium flowers?
I had a sudden thought. What about my pink flowering gum? I looked up. NO! They had eaten those too.

The bugs are still inside the cups of the flowers so by morning there will be no colour left on the tree at all. So now I am feeling very sad. I put all this effort into creating colour and what do I do? I attract not only the birds that enjoy the nectar in them but the horrible little creatures that destroy everything in their path. My garden will look like everyone else's by morning. Just green. Sigh.....
AJ

Insects in the garden

When you are not using a macro lens, taking insects and getting something you can see is not easy. This afternoon I wandered quietly around the front garden with my Olympus in my hand and the 40 - 150mm lens and ND2 filter attached. To begin with my spirits rose as I heard the sound of Blue Wrens and one by one three little birds flew out from the vegetation just in front of me - but that was the trouble. They flew out and they didn't return! The wrens are not in the garden all the time, they must migrate to other places because we haven't seen or heard them for months.

Dejected I walked round and round the garden very slowly with eyes peeled and spotted a tiny dragonfly. Carefully I lined him up and focused and fired. Hmm, wrong setting, turned the dials and had another go. Much better. Once more try - but it had gone! Will it turn out? Here it is.....

Then I notice two yellow and black hornets mining for mud to build a nest. I had several tries at capturing them but I really needed to get closer and my camera would not let me. Wrong lens for the job. Oh for a macro lens!!! The insects would carry off their mud and return for more so I would have had plenty of opportunity to get good shots - but my attempts with the 40-150mm are not worth keeping.Another dragonfly was sighted and I kept far enough back for the lens to be zoomed in and focused and managed to get two shots before this energetic insect disappeared. When I processed the shots of this dragonfly I could see that it was different from the first one.

Summer is a busy time for insects. In close up they are fascinating to look at. (All except the cockroach!)

AJ