Florist News

So I'm in the garden at the shop today and am happily watering everything and I see some bugs - butt ugly ones - crawling around on my Acer. At a closer look I see ALOT of these butt-ugly bugs crawling around almost everything!!!!! Now, I am a huge bug-hater. I usually don't want to hear about how they are God's creatures and they are here for a reason because I have rarely made friends with cute little ants that look like those pictured in those Pixar films!! I'm the type of person who ALWAYS gets bitten by those nasty big grey flying flesh-eaters (horse flies I think?)that take a chunck out of your leg and I end up in the hospital being treated for some sort of allergy and panick attacks!!

Anyway, I'm eyeing these butt-ugly black-with-an-orange-stripe, hairy looking bugs that are infesting my plants and am thinking "must ask my gardener tomorrow what poison I need to get rid of these nasties!! THEN I see that alot of my plants have Aphids (plant lice!!!!) and these nasty black buggers are eating them!!! So I think YAY! A bug that is doing good! Even though they are as ugly as the devil they are eating the Aphids who can do alot of damage to the preeeeety little plants I want to sell!!!! So I just sit there for a moment and watch my little black devils munching the bad little green lice(I know, sad huh?!) and lo and behold my gardener (he's not really 'my' gardener, he's 'a' gardener where I buy alot of plants off!) comes strolling in to my lice paradise and gets all excited and exclaims that my black-devils are immature Ladybugs!!!! And as we all know...Ladybugs EAT ALOT OF APHIDS! I have literally HUNDREDS if not thousands of baby Ladybugs!! And he goes on to tell me that this year we have a huge lice population(because of the mild winter we've had) and therefore the ladybug population will also increase and THEREFORE we will be needing to use alot less poison to kill the Aphids, and by the looks of it, my garden is a Ladybug heaven as far as food for them goes!!!

Moral of the story...not everything that is black, hairy and butt-ugly deserves to die!!!! Oh, by the way, I still HATE bugs, creepy crawlies and anything that is THAT small and can crawl into my ear whilst I sleep and lay eggs

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~

Hahahaha they are funny looking critters aren't they? I'm jealous of your shop garden, I want one.

oooh I'll have to keep an eye out for ugly as the devil bugs

I didn't know what baby ladybugs looked like either...I need some, the nasty aphids are sucking the life out of my roses

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Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

I really couldn't believe it when he told me that these horrid little critters would turn out to be cut little ladybugs....which btw are the ONLY bugs I will let crawl on my hand! typical girl huh?!

Oh rosa, you'd like my shop garden...hehe...I am tempted to put out a few bistro chairs and a table and have lunch in there sometimes!! (I'll see to getting a few piccies up!) It really is my pride and joy! It is still quite new (2 yrs) and needs to 'grow together', if you know what I mean, but its getting there! The shop is actually too small but the garden is the thing that holds me back from seriously looking for another location! At christmas we have every nook and cranny filled with little garden accesories and white mini lights and for our Advent openhouse we have a huge logfire in one of those metal basket((patio fireplace??), and in the spring we have everything filled with bulbs etc. Now in the summer its great to display baskets and pots spilling over with geraniums and perrenials...wanna come and work in my garden?

Sosas, my roses are dying a slow and painful death too haha, I was actually thinking of collecting some baby-devils and importing them to my garden at home to set them loose on my roses there!

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~

hehehehe ladybugs are the only thing I'll let on crawl on me too....I'm petrified of spiders, especially horrid big garden ones.. I HAVE to wear gloves all the time and I always wear trousers even in summer in case they leap on me

I must admit I have sprayed the roses though and they look a bit better

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Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

haha!gloves and trousers- me too!! I think I recall you advising me to some sort of spider-grabber thingy when I first joined this site!!

ugh, these big black hairy spiders are finding their way into my bathroom again. Each year they come at the beginning of summer through some little crack in the wall and quadruple their size whilst living for a few days in my bathroom, then they show their UGLY face and out somes the spray can...I honestly do not feel ANY guilt when they are drenched in poison and struggling to breath!

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~

They are pretty ugly - who would believe they would turn into cute litte red and black spotted things. To all those who want to see what they look like just type baby ladybirds into google images and you should get one or too
But they are worth it to eat the aphids.
In fact you could probably transport them from your garden shop to your garden as you can even buy them in baby stage (or full size - but risk of flying away) over the internet So they probably would not mind the move

imagine this...a loopy florist gathering ladybug babies from some plants into a jar...filled with a few aphid-infested twigs...and screwing the lid on when she has gathered about 50-60 of these little devils and then TALKING to them whilst driving home to her garden, telling them "its ok, the place where you are going is a paradise for you little devils, you'll all really like it there-lots of food, its a ladybug buffet!"

...the things you do to save a mapletree-sappling, some roses and a cherry tree(small one!)

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~success is a lousy teacher...it seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose~

Youve been bitten by the BUGS then

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Heres a pic I took last year with ladybugs on mass!! Its not a brilliant photo, but even tho there were so many there wasn't a baby in sight!

Attached Images

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FAUN TO BE WILD...!!!