I hear every word you are saying and feel your pain ms minnamouse! I too am thinking of by-passing planting this year. I also have them in my house. We killed hundreds and still kill at least one, almost daily. They walked right in through ac window units in upstairs bedrooms. Really gross creatures! Contrary to what other have said, dogs don't eat them. I have 2...neither eats them. In fact, they leave the room when one buzzes. NOTHING eats them, no matter what people try to tell you. I may mass plant marigold since I believe or HOPE they won't ATTRACT even more of what we already have. It's good to hear that research is being done but it won't help fast enough. I think they are predicting Millions upon Millions of them this year. (Gloucester County Times reported it.)We are planning to buy a case of caulking and sealing up what we could find AFTER whats left in our house leaves this spring. (We don't want to seal what's here...in) We are hoping they don't find a NEW way back in, after we caulk and seal every crevice and crack we can find. We will be installing central ac which will cost us a fortune -since we live in an old house with baseboard heat. :( We will seal carefully ourselves around the new install. We are dreading this coming autumn. There is a stink bug board out there where people are saying that a certain chemical works BUT it's poison to humans and all wildlife/insects. These wasps can't come fast enough but am wondering what the cost will be to our beneficials. No matter what...something needs to be done! I'm sure you know this but, I'll say it for those that don't..We found that dish washing liquid and water works best (it smothers them) but we can't spray our walls or ceiling with it so we use alcohol in spray bottles. It helps knock them off of the ceiling and works without damage to our paint or furniture. It doesn't kill them as fast as soap though. We also will just get them with a tissue and flush them. We used alcohol to kill the hundreds we found in our upstairs bedrooms. It won't stop them from coming though. We had to replace a window this winter and found about 100 of them huddled under our siding...in one little area! I have cedar siding so the soap solution is no good for us out there. The alcohol damages our stain so that's out too ...we feel so screwed and helpless against these disgusting creatures. I really don't want to use poison but I can't live with hoards of them in my house either. If I had hundreds this year, I'm going to get thousands next fall. We need help NOW...not in a few years. I'm getting the creepy crawlies just talking about it. If you find any answers, please post! Youtube shows a man having so many that he scrapes them off of his door to get into his house...poor guy! google it...there are many out there facing this plague. I really feel so sorry for those that are being over run and run out of their houses by these disgusting...

I'm going to guess that many commenting on this topic are past 30....or 40. It's a different world now, fellow fogies :). I feel fortunate that I work with college kids, and have twentysomething offspring because I get a front row seat to see how very different their perspective is. To start, EVERYTHING is online, and online is literally at their fingertips. This isn't just millenials of course, but it certainly permeates the retail world. Used to be one really did depend on the salesman/woman to provide important information about whatever product we were shopping for. Just not the case any more--anything you want to know is usually available online, so like it or not the expectation is that the shopper already has done some research. And shopping online is here to stay. Again, like it or not-and Faron is eloquent about the service he provides as an independent vendor-many/most people shop based on price. Lower cost, free shipping and delivery to your own front door for many folks are always going to trump service. Corollary is what Faron also mentioned-people who use bricks n mortar shopping just to enhance what they already plan to buy online. Think sales people don't deal with that every.single.day? They do and it certainly colors how they feel about customer service. And last but not least, auntjen is IMO entirely correct. That last mile interface-the sales staff on the showroom or big box store floor-is almost certainly not making much more than minimum wage in most cases. It's awfully easy to sit at home on a computer and opine about how much better and more thoroughly you would be providing service....especially those who maybe haven't worked in a store for awhile, if ever. It's a tough way to make a living and many struggle to do so on the wages that stores pay.

Hi Kaitlyn- I'd put up a bluebird box. I've got a good # of HOSP, too, but the sparrow spooker has worked out so far. My EABL's had 3 broods last year. The reason why the spooker goes up after the 1st egg is because the bluebirds are committed to the box after they lay an egg. Once you put up the spooker, make sure the bluebirds take to it. If you've got a 2nd egg the next day, then you're good to go. The reason why you don't want to keep the sparrow spooker up all the time is so the HOSP don't get too used to it. After the babies fledge, you take it down. The Sialis site is the best site to guide you on how to deal with HOSP. Fishing line can be used year round, but you want to make sure it's thick enough & weighted down so no birds get caught up in it. If HOSP get to box 1st, you are legally allowed to remove their nest & eggs. Sometimes, a Van Ert trap is necessary to trap them in box if they keep invading, but you need to monitor hourly so you don't trap a bluebird or something else. Others use ground traps, too. The Sialis site should guide you through this. Also, I feed dried mealworms in winter & live ones during nesting season to keep the bluebirds around. HOSP will eat anything, but they like seed better than anything else, so I don't use it. Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with. Nicole

I think one of the things that makes rose gardening so addictive is the fleeting and intermittent positive reinforcement we get from it (referring to an older behaviorist theory from B.F. Skinner in the 50's). Theory in layman's terms: "when we know to expect the reward after taking a certain action, we tend to work less for it. Yet when the timing of the reward or the certainty that we’ll get it at all is unpredictable, we tend to repeat that behavior with even more enthusiasm, in hope for the end result." With all the work we do on our roses, we never know which days one or more blooms, or bushes will be PERFECTION, versus the next - covered in bugs, fried from heat, dead from freeze, blown from wind. But striving for - that perfectly formed bloom (for a day!), or the orchestration of a bush where it looks like someone actually coordinated its' blooms hoping the sun will stay in place long enough to capture in a photo - which never seems to replicate the beauty our eyes actually see, or that delectable fragrance that inevitably diminishes with subsequent sniffs, not allowing us to actually "capture" that ecstasy for more than a moment. It is THESE moments we garden for. Thats why we bother!