SPIDERS! EVERYWHERE!

I call all mine Charlotte too!

I call mine things that are against DG terms of service to type here.

;p

Pony I would be disappointed if you called the Charlotte. ;)

*snicker*

I call mine, My friends. they take care of the bad bugs.
"Say goodnight sweetie, you are my dinner". LOL

I let them hang out in the garden but not in the house, or on the porches. After 5 days of systemic reaction - no way. I am no longer friends with spiders. By the way, what's with all the fuzzy caterpillars?

Fuzzy caterpillars (wooly bears) come out in numbers this time of year. Urban legend? The length of the black stripe in the coat of the wooly bears indicates how severe the winter will be.

Judi, sorry about your spider bites. You must have stumbled across a mean one somewhere. I usually get a couple a year, they itch for a few days, but nothing like what you are going through. Hope that it is all behind you now and you are feeling up to par once again.

My fuzzy caterpillars are cream colored with dark feet and head. Instinct tells me to avoid them, or maybe I'm gun shy after the spider bites.

The bites are almost gone and I am feeling fine. They didn't itch or sting or I would have realized what was wrong a little sooner. Just a bit tired now, but what's new! LOL

I haven't seen a single caterpillar around here. Sure have lots of grasshoppers all of a sudden, though.

I have not seen a woolly bear at all here.
Judi, glad you are Okay.

I went out today and got to play with the 8 legged wonders of the world. LOL.
I was on the hunt for those, Earwigs that are destroying my Dal's. nasty bugs.
I was dead heading my Dals, and putting the flower heads in a bucket. I could see them. I did not have any dish washing soap to put in the bucket as I have been told to do. But I found something better. LOL

I poured pine cleaner in the bucket and added water, then soak and stir
And watch them die, Hate them, LOL

Eww. Earwigs are so creepy. Blech.

Omigosh, I love earwigs! They're so pretty & feisty. They've never bothered anything I grew.
Aren't they also really good at taking out the bad bugs?

RIP, Tilly's earwigs.

Feisty? LOL! I just think they're nasty squirmy little ickmonsters.

Nooooooooooo! Don't kill them. If I find one in the house, I actually let it pinch my finger & carry it out that way if it hangs on.

You're welcome to come and gather mine and take them home with you.

From the almighty Wikipedia:

"Plants that they feed on typically include clover, dahlias,zinnias, butterfly bush, hollyhock, lettuce, cauliflower, strawberry,sunflowers, celery, peaches, plums, grapes, potatoes, roses, seedling beans and beets, and tender grass shoots and roots; they have also been known to eat corn silk, damaging the corn"

Yep. You can have them. Please, take them all. ;p

Are you organic? I've always figured that leaving the natural balance be as much as possible lets them all keep each other in check.

Of course, that doesn't explain why, 6 weeks into this house, my kitchen counter is awash in ants again tonight. It's as if they're coming begging for the boric-based ant traps I've been putting out.

At first, I would see them crowd around the bait & feel AWFUL to be such a trickster but now ... I'm like DIE ALREADY. Or just stop coming in the electrical outlet.

Maybe Pine Sol would do the trick?

Organic? No, but I am half Swedish.

I thought those boric traps were supposed to work really well... I haven't had to deal with ants much, so I have no idea.

I with you Pony creepy earwigs, don't they crawl into your ears?

Eeewww earwigs. Don't like them - they are so ugly. Yesterday I was visited by winged ants. I read that you have to kill everyone you find because they are trying to start new colonies. I walked around with rolled up newspaper. It would be ever so much easier if all the beneficial bugs were one color and the ones you should be wary of another color.

summerkid, you would not be so easy on the earwigs if you found your favorite dahlia blossom shredded by a batch of them. It is also interesting the watch RJ's eeewww earwig dance when she finds one in her daylily seed pod as she is trying to harvest the seeds. Some very nice seeds have gone by the wayside, never to be located on the ground then. That is very upsetting seeing that the crosses she makes are hand pollinated and the seed are not plentiful in a pod.
When I harvested my sweet corn last weekend, there were quite a few scuttling about as I husked, but they had not gotten to the kernels to do damage yet, thank goodness.

Yep Summer, you can have all my earwigs too! I am ok with almost all bugs, but there is something about earwigs and their ugly little beings that just make me shiver. And Mom is not exagerating when she says that I have lost dozens of daylily seeds due to those little monsters. The seeds are ready to harvest when the top of the pod splits...and the seeds are shiny and black. I KNOW that there is a posibility that the shiny black thing I see in the pod is an earwig...I KNOW that they hide in the seedpods...I KNOW that they won't hurt me...and still I screetch and toss the whole pod when one comes shooting out of the crack! Knee jerk reaction and I just can't get over it!

Judy, I'm with you...color coded bugs would be a blessing!

Poor Julie! So the earwigs are winning out against the massive, logical organ known as the human brain. Can you clip the blossom into a tupperware container & let the bugs scramble out first?

I reacted that way to ticks as long as there was any man around to let me be hysterical & then take care of the problem. Now, well, I don't have that luxury. I can get hysterical but there's no one to see & no one to take the tick off the dog unless I calm down.

Back in Kankakee, Tommy (neighbor) and I almost lost half-a-dozen spruces to a massive infestation of some insect (spruce bagworm?). They make cocoons of the needles, very tough to kill. He eventually sprayed something very toxic that wafted over onto mine too & took care of the problem that year. From then on, though, whenever I would snag any cocoons within arm's reach, I would find an earwig, no larva. They kept the population under dangerous levels, for which I was very grateful.

I'm buying lots of bottles of pine cleaner, worked great and smelled nice too. LOL
Want to fine if they make traps for them, like go in and can't come out???

Make your own earwig traps:
http://www.helium.com/items/511987-how-to-make-earwig-traps
http://www.ehow.com/how_155998_rid-earwigs.html

Or, if you prefer store-bought:
http://www.biconet.com/crawlers/earwig.html

Earwigs in your dahlias:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/747116/

Using vaseline:
http://www.blossomswap.com/garden-forums/archive/index.php/t-15342.html

And there's a ton more stuff out there.

Kathy

I have a wooly caterpillat on my front porch. 'Flying ants' the big ones, are really termites. Dogs, cats and yellowjackets love to eat them.

Phoenix has a blast catching termites out of the air!

When I was watering this morning I saw exactly what is making the spiders so fat and happy. Bees! Their webs are full of bees! I don't see any other creatures caught in the webs, just bees. I knew I didn't like spiders for a reason! I looked for any bees I could rescue but almost all of them were wrapped tightly or half gone. So what's so great about spiders???

How long do bees live?

Found this on the net.
The average life expectancy of a queen bee is 6 years, a worker bee, 6 months, and a drone, just 8 weeks.

Thanks Kathy

NOT ALL FLYING ANTS ARE TERMITES.
They're just looking for new homes, so at this time of year some of the larvae develop wings.

Ants in the garden are NOT the enemy. They are incredibly diligent pollinators & scavengers.

I think I need to stay out of insect-related threads. Didn't this start out as being an homage to spiders & their webs?

One creepy-crawly leads to another. ;p

It's easy to tell the difference between flying ants and termite, their shapes are very different. I almost never see actual flying ants around here.

The one on the left looks like a carpenter ant. I think ants swarm at different times than termites.

I have a new dance. It's called the 'SPIDER ON ME!' dance and is seeing plenty of action right about now. How many spiders can I possibly get on me at any one time? Adrenaline rushes like that I do not need! I walk through the garden with a stick held in front, moving it up and down in front of me, and I still get them on me. I think I am spider free and go about my business, only to feel tiny legs crawling on my chest. BLECH! There was one on my leg in the bathroom the other night. EEEEEWWWWW! I don't think I've been bitten yet, but I watched in horror as a large garden spider sank its fangs into one of my dragonflies yesterday. Poor dragonfly! And yes, bees are getting it as well. I'd like to see more flies in those webs. I don't begrudge them, but I just don't want them on me!

Summer, I volunteer all of my earwigs to come live with you. They are shredders on par with the slugs. You can have them. And their cute little pincers, too.

What I am most curious about is where the spiders were before the first of September.......

HIding under things in your garden?

"Finally, the reason why we see so many spiders around September is because it is the breeding season and the males are on the hunt for a mate."

http://arachnophiliac.info/burrow/news/spiders_are_not.htm

Spiders of the Pacific Northwest

http://share3.esd105.wednet.edu/rsandelin/Fieldguide/Animalpages/Insects/Spiders.htm

A lot of them hatch out in spring.....they are there just waiting for pixy and pony!

*squick* *squick* *squick*