wait, wait..............................these beetles are FIRE ENGINE
RED??????????????????????????????????????????????? ????? Are they about the
size roughly of fireflies? My son's friends who call us "Ma and Pa" and
whose two boys call us Granny and Paw Paw bought a new house just five miles
away and the front of their house is CRAWLING with these screaming red
beetles......anyone out there got PICTURES:???????????? If this is them, I
need to know NOW so I can be on the look out!!!! (holy shit, this freaks me
out, I ADORE my lilies, if you wanna see why I don't want these, holler at
me and I'll send you a pic I took today.....)madgardener
"LeeAnne" wrote in message
...
Hi Mad, great to hear from you . . .

" I read a disturbing article yesterday in the newly arrived Horticulture
Magazine and it gave me the shudders. There is a lily beetle that has
been
here for just past a decade

These beetles SUCK! I have been in an ongoing battle w/them for years,
but
the lilies keep coming back, which is great. You have to pick the
fire-engine red beetles off the plant and drown them in soapy water (my
method anyway) and you have to inspect the undersides of the leaves as
that's where the 'slugs' are - the babies covered in poop - oh yuck, I
didn't know it was poop, how gross (but an impressive mechanism devised by
Ma Nature!). I squish them and I scrape eggs. I think it's the larvae
that
do the most damage by, what appears to be, sucking the life out of the
leaf
they reside on. This is the only area of my yard that I've actually
resorted to poison in - we'll see if the stuff works - I hate having to
use
it.


First year successes for some yarrows, but they're flopping about like
tantrum children so I know the soil is still too rich for their toes.

I have a plant that is popping up all over my yard and I believe it is a
yarrow of sorts, something like achillea milleflora (sp?!?!?), very
invasive -- so be careful what you plant, lol.

LeeAnne,
zone 5, north of Boston, MA


madgardener up on the humid ridge, back in Fairy Holler overlooking
English
Mountain in EAstern Tennessee zone 7, Sunset zone 36