Well, not on my person, you understand. At least, not now that I’ve washed them off. But the little blighters (polite term) have been sucking the sap out of several plants. And the ants (no polite term for these bastards!) are husbanding them. I tried the soapy water trick and got nowhere ( mind you, the leaves were nice and clean!) so this morning I said some “magic words” and drenched said bastards with white oil. Just hope Mr. Murphy’s famous law doesn’t apply!
Anyway, what with messing about in the garden and one thing and another…I didn’t get around to posting the mystery picture result.
It’s that strip of dots on the edge of my windscreen; something to do with the lamination process, I think.
Not mystery pictures this time, just a couple of gratuitous flower photos…
A hoya. No, I have no idea of its name. But I’m rather chuffed at having flowers as something usually chews through the buds before I even get to see what colour it will be. Now I know. Want to see more? Enter hoya in Google Images.
I’ve mentioned stinkhorns before. A bumper crop came up recently after the heavy rain. Mercifully, the sun came out and burned them before things got too smelly.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phallaceae Lacy and not unattractive to look at. But perhaps not what you really want below the dining room window! The first time I saw one (not the variety above) I thought something had decapitated one of my roosters!
I spent ages the other day, scrambling through the garden, trying to get a good photo of what I thought was either a phaesant coucal or a juvenile female koel.
Yes, a quite lovely shot of carallia and terminalia leaves! Ooh!look! there’s a koel up there! Many people go bonkers at the koels’ calling all night. Personally, I’d far rather hear the koel than the little yapster that goes off his (very tiny) brain when the telephone rings!
And since I’ve also mentioned the coucal, here’s Chapman’s recording of one. http://www.graemechapman.com.au/cgi-bin/viewphotos.php?c=78
(credit:Chapman.)
I think it’s time for some lunch…
Moreidlethoughts Weblog 
No flower shots are gratuitious. Ever. Frost often nips our Hoya, but it is the cause for celebration when it does bloom. Every few years.
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Mine is winding its way through a jasmine, around the carport posts and doubling back. After 10 years, I should have flower trusses by the metre. sigh…I suspect grasshoppers.
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I need to visit just to “meet” all the cool birds you have Down Under. That koel looks a little like a Northern Flicker. And how come your flowers always look so much more robust than ours? (As for aphids, my rose-growing days, such as they were, all long gone because of them!) (And BTW I can’t be arsed to figure out how to leave a comment linking to my Blogster blog, so you get my newly-revamped experimental blog to look at. Non-functional and entirely decorative.)
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Readers- this is Andrea of http://andreapratt.blogspot.com.au/
I think we’re all thoroughly fed up with the Happiness Engineers! Is this a duel between WordPress and Blogger?
Koel like a flicker? I need to check, but I thought flickers were smaller, slimmer. Come on down and bring that Nikon!
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I see that Amazon will sell you ladybugs to get rid of your aphids and Japanese beetles. Didn’t have a problem with those last year, but the blackspot was something terrible. I see that Marie had the same problem with her roses on her terrace, also. I think it had something to do with all the heat and humidity we had. I think we’re on track to beat the heat records of last summer this year. I was going to prune back the rose bushes, but they are full of buds. Now what?
Your hoya looks very similar to my Star-of-Bethlehem plant that has just started to bloom.
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We’ve had so much rain recently, and hotter than usual autumn(yes, even in the tropics!) that things were just way out of balance.
I’m happy to let the beasties duke it out most times, but as these poor shrubs are still quite small I felt they needed a John Wayne to come riding over the hill and take out a few bad guys.
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had never heard of the soapy water or oil tricks for aphid removal. i like that they are both fairly easy and non-toxic. my initial response is to revert to chemical warfare, but that’s usually a bad plan…
windscreen? i don’t own a car new enough to have that sort of thing! no way i’d have gotten it!
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Just make sure it’s not a hot day when you use white oil! And don’t spray that on very tender shoots or things with “hairy” leaves. Not completely non-toxic, but ‘way better than some of the crap that’s promoted.
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I too thought ladybirds/bugs were the answer to aphids? You catch a few ladybirds – you can tell they’re undernourished if they’ve come out in spots, Amazon won’t guarantee this – in a jam-jar, and let them loose on the aphid-ridden plants. Never heard a ladybird burp? You will soon!
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Well, yes, ladybirds are voracious little critters. And cute! But they’ve been in serious decline in recent years (bloody Monsanto et al!). And I also had a lot of scale on 2 plants.Manual eradication is all very well, but I needed help.
By the way, people…if you have ladybirds with lots of spots you probably have the dreaded 28 Spot Ladybird and that’s a dreadful thing.http://aussieorganicgardening.com/?p=718
The good ones have only a few spots, usually 5, 7, or about that.
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Those hoyas are beautiful. And thanks for the ladybird information. I’ve never seen one with more than 6 or 7 spots
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Of course, by “those” hoyas you mean the ones on the link, not mine! But wait!….I have 2 more on the other side of the pole!
Only regular ladybirds? Your near neighbours must NOT be spraying! 🙂
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Yes, I did as suggested and checked out google images for the flowers. Some of them are truly sensational.
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*waves*
yes yes yes (in a Harry Met Sally sandwich style)
see you soon!
XXX
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Jax! You’re coming to visit you-know-who? Oh! Frabjous day!
Doing siully happy dance and emailing said person…
😉 🙂 🙂
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Aphids! Cursed little fellows. I’ve always has success with the soapy water but as my garden is sadly neglected I’m not sure what little critters are flourishing there. I have a Hoya in a pot, looks like yours, that flowers well, but one I put in the ground is growing but not blooming.
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Yank that ground-planted hoya out now and pot it, in a pot at least one size smaller than you think it needs. They will only flower when their roots are seriously confined! Mine is in a crappy plastic 10cm pot and I think this will be its last season as the plastic is cracking away.
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