Thank you all for your wonderful compliments. TinfoilHat, I just made a design on a piece of cardboard and bent the coat-hangers to match then welded them together. The most time consuming part was making the holes in the green bottle so I could screw the wings and legs on. I think it's the challenge of figuring out how to do things that keeps it fun. The curly wire was wrapped around a steel rod then stretched a bit. Robert

Update - First, thank you ALL for your suggestions & comments. I certainly learned alot (I always do @ GW!). Anyway, further inspection indicated probably not a massive infestation of spider mites (a honeysuckle on other side of yard had 'em & I'm constantly pulling off webs), but jusst in case I sprayed the heck out of the under-side of the leaves w/the hose sprayer. Also, I fed it some fish emulsion plant food. THEN, a friend of ours who is a garden-specialist type (yes, there's a label, but I forget it - maybe landscape architect? I'm not sure) - was over for dinner tonight & he said ... doesn't look like a pest b/c no brown spots (except a couple leaves - so he compared them for me) ... and it does look like HEAT distress & lack of water. He said the yellow bottom leaves look like normal leaf drop. But, the top, newer growth that looks like "spinach" (my new term for the very puckered mangled look), probably got heat distress during that heat wave and/or just before it. He said that pests can cause that, but given the condition of the bush & how it looks, it was probably just heat & lack of water. Just thought I'd share the info & update in case anyone in the future does & search & is wondering. :) He said it should bloom ok. All the Best, Tree

In 2011, and for the first time, nasturtiums that I hung in a pot picked up something black that could have been an aphid. There were so many of them that it would have been difficult to find some not-infested leaf to eat. It was late summer (and at that time I did not know that summer would last until late November) so I just let the bugs have their way. They got very thick as all the weeks passed that I was sure would be the last before frost (which we usually get here in September). As a side note, why is it that everyone (seems to) know that the flowers are edible but seem to not know that the leaves have pretty much the same flavor? I use the leaves constantly in salads and in cooking. So, I have just started a new crop for this year: 4 types from Johnny's Seeds: Peach Melba, Night & Day, Empress of India, Kaleidoscope. I just noticed what looks to be white fly. I put some Sticky Traps from Safer's near the plants. I have some basil that may be affected and I have 9 varieties of tomatoes coming up. It is too cold to move the tomatoes outside and I do not want them infested. So, even though nasturtiums are specifically stated on the label of Safer's Soap as "do not use [soap on nasturtiums]", I took most of them outside, sprayed them with Safer's Soap (and some liquid seaweed), and came here.

I have the same problem too. I've heard that the orange milk weed bugs are poisonous, so lady bugs won't eat them. We seem to have a problem keeping lady bugs around for some reason. For people that want to attract butterflies (especially monarchs), they grow milk weed, so why pull it out? (one writer suggests pulling the plants out). The orange tiny bugs on the milk weed do not get eaten by any bug because I've read they are poinsonous. These bugs keep increasing, and eventually kill the flowers on the milk weed. I use a spray bottle filled with plain water, and I put about a teaspoon of dish washing detergent into the bottle, and I spray the milk weed and other affected plants with the mixture. I find on the milk weed, after I spray it, the leaves turn yellow and drop off, so I cut the stems down, and it contines to grow back. The mixture works great on my other plants. Good for aphids, and weevils too.