Wooly Aphids

On our nightly sojourn through the backyard surveying our gardens, I looked at my coneflowers and said, “WTF is that?”  Then, I quickly noticed “that” was also on the phlox, the hummingbird bush, and the black-eyed susans.  “That” appeared to be something akin to a white mildew that I have found on the phlox before, but thicker.  Like cottony.  We moved on.  Nothing new in the veggies.  I stopped to pinch back a flowering cilantro plant, and there “that” was again.  Upon closer inspection “that” was clearly a pest with wings and legs and a weird white fuzzy back. 

Gross.

At piano, I pulled out the piece of shit iPhone and googled “fuzzy white garden bug” and after waiting and waiting and waiting (damn you 3G network) I saw a reference to something called the Wooly Aphid.  Farmer Ted viewed the image and confirmed that we have indeed caught the Wooly Aphids.  Which is much better than catching say…the crabs.

I digress…back when Farmer Ted and I first had our initial flirtation on Facebook (yes we are one of those couples), he made a comment on a pic of me in my “Slammin’ Halloween Witch Hat.”

I volleyed with a comment on a pic of him with a big ass stone crab “I see you’ve caught crabs, they have meds for that.”

He started making daily FB proclamations that I was the "hottest woman in the solar system," and the rest is history.

Back to the aphids.  Anonymous recently commented on one of our blog posts with an inquiry as to how we have combatted pests thus far.  Frankly, we’ve done little.  We had an initial issue with cutworms, but surrounded the young plants with cut-out Dixie cups to enable them to grow tall enough so the cutworms couldn’t get at the leaves.  Success.  We’ve been organic so far, and in solidarity with our friend Maintzie and the Becky Spach Landes Memorial Garden we will try to remain true to organic pest control.

Right this minute, we are boiling a head of garlic in water and will be spraying those menaces.  If that doesn’t work, we’ll try cayenne pepper water.  If that doesn’t work, I am not opposed to employing the use of DDT to save my flowers.  Just like I’m not opposed to lighting up Thumper’s ass with a paintball gun.  You'd better stay away from my apricot stumps, silly rabbit.

Next…Rufus vs. the Hummingbird.  Note we still do not have hummingbird pics.