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Release the Hounds Ladybugs!
Jul. 2nd, 2009 08:22 amHuh . . . apparently you can't do "strike" in the headline. It was supposed to be "Release the Hounds Ladybugs!" but oh well.
I received, in the mail yesterday, 1500 ladybugs. Last night, I set a good portion of them free. *grin*
As some of you know, I have a container garden on the roof with lots and lots of plants, all of them doing fairly well. However, recently I've been beset with aphids. Now, a bunch of ladybugs found them and laid eggs and the little eggs hatched into the "crocodiles" that swarmed over the plants and ate a good chunk of the aphids before moving to the top of the plants and morphing themselves into ladybugs, which ate more of the aphids. But I still have aphids left over and that run of ladybugs seems to be done for the most part. In particular, I have a bunch of black aphids on one of the artichoke plants and the hibiscus. So, rather than spray with some kind of chemical to kill the aphids, my partner went online and found you can order ladybugs by the gallon if necessary. I'd much rather fight nature with nature. We ordered 1500 ladybugs, which arrived yesterday and so there was an official "release" last night.
And the release was interesting. I cut a small corner off of the bag and the ladybugs seemed to be able to sense freedom because the next thing I knew they were crawling all over the bag and my arm. I spent the half hour running from plant to plant trying to get them off the bag and my arm and onto the plants, where they invariably stopped to such up whatever moisture they could find. Apparently they were thirsty. There was a scary moment when I didn't think we'd be able to get the bag closed again with some of the ladybugs inside because they were swarming so much. But we did and now the bag of bugs is in the refrigerator. You can keep them in the refrigerator for two weeks before they spoil. Or something.
Hopefully this will solve the aphid problem. We'll be sharing some of the ladybugs with friends (because our container garden isn't THAT large that it requires 1500 of them) and doing at least one more release in our own garden, but it's been an interesting experiment so far.
In other news, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Online Writing Workshop (OWW for short) is currently running a "Crit Marathon," where intrepid critters like me are competing to win prizes and clean out the under-reviewed submission stack. If you've never tried out the workshop, now might be a good time. The first month of the workshop is free when you sign up, so if you join now you can get some of your work posted up there and hopefully reviewed many, many times during the marathon. It would be a good taste of what the workshop can be like. Many published writers have had their stuff on the workshop before being published, including me, so there's a pretty good success rate in the long run over there. (Most of the published writers don't participate any more on the workshop though.) So go check it out. Online workshops aren't necessarily for everyone, but it never hurts to try it out.
And in revision news, I made it through chapter 8 yesterday . . . but only because skipped writing the brand new scene that needs to be inserted into it. Everything else in the chapter is good, but I'll have to write the new scene today. You see . . . um . . . well, I ended up reading the whole chapter looking for where to insert the scene, found a good place . . . and then procrastinated on writing it by doing the hardcore revision on the rest of the chapter first. I'm not sure why I'm procrastinating on writing the one scene--it's not a long scene at all--but for some reason I am. I'll have to tackle it today though, and hopefully get a good chunk (if not all) of chapter 9 done. Somewhere in chapters 9 and 10 I'll need to add in at least one more scene from the same POV as the one I need to add in chapter 8.
I'll update everyone on the revisions tomorrow, maybe even show everyone the new scene, if it all goes well today.
I received, in the mail yesterday, 1500 ladybugs. Last night, I set a good portion of them free. *grin*
As some of you know, I have a container garden on the roof with lots and lots of plants, all of them doing fairly well. However, recently I've been beset with aphids. Now, a bunch of ladybugs found them and laid eggs and the little eggs hatched into the "crocodiles" that swarmed over the plants and ate a good chunk of the aphids before moving to the top of the plants and morphing themselves into ladybugs, which ate more of the aphids. But I still have aphids left over and that run of ladybugs seems to be done for the most part. In particular, I have a bunch of black aphids on one of the artichoke plants and the hibiscus. So, rather than spray with some kind of chemical to kill the aphids, my partner went online and found you can order ladybugs by the gallon if necessary. I'd much rather fight nature with nature. We ordered 1500 ladybugs, which arrived yesterday and so there was an official "release" last night.
And the release was interesting. I cut a small corner off of the bag and the ladybugs seemed to be able to sense freedom because the next thing I knew they were crawling all over the bag and my arm. I spent the half hour running from plant to plant trying to get them off the bag and my arm and onto the plants, where they invariably stopped to such up whatever moisture they could find. Apparently they were thirsty. There was a scary moment when I didn't think we'd be able to get the bag closed again with some of the ladybugs inside because they were swarming so much. But we did and now the bag of bugs is in the refrigerator. You can keep them in the refrigerator for two weeks before they spoil. Or something.
Hopefully this will solve the aphid problem. We'll be sharing some of the ladybugs with friends (because our container garden isn't THAT large that it requires 1500 of them) and doing at least one more release in our own garden, but it's been an interesting experiment so far.
In other news, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Online Writing Workshop (OWW for short) is currently running a "Crit Marathon," where intrepid critters like me are competing to win prizes and clean out the under-reviewed submission stack. If you've never tried out the workshop, now might be a good time. The first month of the workshop is free when you sign up, so if you join now you can get some of your work posted up there and hopefully reviewed many, many times during the marathon. It would be a good taste of what the workshop can be like. Many published writers have had their stuff on the workshop before being published, including me, so there's a pretty good success rate in the long run over there. (Most of the published writers don't participate any more on the workshop though.) So go check it out. Online workshops aren't necessarily for everyone, but it never hurts to try it out.
And in revision news, I made it through chapter 8 yesterday . . . but only because skipped writing the brand new scene that needs to be inserted into it. Everything else in the chapter is good, but I'll have to write the new scene today. You see . . . um . . . well, I ended up reading the whole chapter looking for where to insert the scene, found a good place . . . and then procrastinated on writing it by doing the hardcore revision on the rest of the chapter first. I'm not sure why I'm procrastinating on writing the one scene--it's not a long scene at all--but for some reason I am. I'll have to tackle it today though, and hopefully get a good chunk (if not all) of chapter 9 done. Somewhere in chapters 9 and 10 I'll need to add in at least one more scene from the same POV as the one I need to add in chapter 8.
I'll update everyone on the revisions tomorrow, maybe even show everyone the new scene, if it all goes well today.
