Adventures in Gardening

I am not a gardener.  I am got good at keeping plants alive, so I never kept any.  But since we moved into our house, I have found that some plants can pretty much keep themselves alive.  The poppies that come up every March, for example, are extremely hardy and need absolutely no interference on my part to do their thing (you know, make my front yard gorgeous for a few months each year).  The roses in our back yard, as well, have fared without me doing much of anything, other than annual pruning.

But this year, our rose bushes have not done so well.  They grow well and are producing large, beautiful roses, but they appear to have some sort of fungus and they are full of aphids.  We don't like to use pesticides on our plants, so off HC went to OSH to buy some ladybugs.  Tonight, after hosing down the rose bushes and waiting for them to be out of the sun, we released our new little friends.

We all had fun, trying to shake them out onto the plants while many of them flew away and many crawled over our hands and arms.  Finally, we got a large number of them onto the bushes, happily wandering, drinking water, and searching for food.  According to the container, in a couple weeks, our bugs will lay eggs.  I hope in the next couple months, we have lots of larvae and many more ladybugs.

For not being a gardener, I sure am enjoying have living plants in my yard!  I have no idea what to do about the fungus on my poor rose bushes, but once our little friends eat those pesky aphids, we'll move on to that.

One of these days, I will post photos about our wildflower garden (which takes no work, either)! 

Happy May Day!