Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Aphid Hunter strikes again!

Barley interrupted my conference call to signal to me that my cell phone was ringing in the living room. Good boy. He hovered at my door, waiting to see if I was going to come out or not. I was not, and I tried to shoo him away, and indicate that the phone could ring, it would go to voicemail. I just had no idea how to sign "voicemail" to a 7-year old.

When I did finally escape, he told me very solemnly that he thought my rosebush was in trouble. "I don't think it's going to make it, Mom" Why not honey? "Well, just come out and look, I'll show you." He started giggling when he realized I was still in my robe from the morning and had to throw on some jeans before I could go in the front yard. I had a lot of conference calls today.

The 3 foot rosebush--which is quite healthy, btw, and in no imminent danger of dying, was covered with aphids however. I'm afraid Barley and I have been a wee bit busy the last week, and have not been out manually scraping aphids off the bush in a several days. Luckily, it is still light well after quitting time, so we headed out with our popsicle sticks and cleaned the rosebush off. I think it will survive after all.

DH told me it was all he could do to keep Barley from bursting in on my conference call earlier to tell me the dire news about the rosebush. I love his enthusiasm for taking care of this rosebush. This may not be the most exciting thing to do on a spring evening, but it's time we spend together, and it does not involve electronics of any kind. I count that as a win.

1 comment:

  1. Hey Jo nice Blog! I love reading about aphids and compost and worms. I have a good aphid story for you and Barley(?). There are aphids in Florida that get on citrus trees they get really thick on the tender new stems. If you tap on the stem gently they all raise their butts in the air in perfect unison. I wonder how they do that it's almost as if they have some kind of psychic connection. Alarm pheromones probably have something to do with it, but it's amazing to see almost like a line of dancing girls in perfect unison, at least to me (a bug geek).

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