Pretty roses! So fresh looking!

I haven't seen any praying mantis this year and sadly I have not toads even though I have a pond. I don't think all these cinder block walls in the neighborhood are conducive for such wildlife to flourish and spread....

Hi Leslie....I can't believe sometimes when I see your pictures that a short time ago you were just getting your roses into a very bare backyard. All your hard work and dedication has really paid off. Your gardens are lovely, keep up the good gardening! The praying Mantis haven't visited me this year. Pat

I do like "Lawrence". Lucky you to have Mantises.... I haven't seen any yet this year.

I'm glad you all liked the pics and yes it's come a long way from bare dirt two summers ago, Pat:)

A lot of my neighbors don't, but I really like having the ponding basin adjacent behind my house, Mikey. Nature is still out of whack with too many of something like the toads, but it's ok with me. I don't spray and I had a bad spring with too many aphids so I bought two batches of ladybugs to try to battle them and the 2nd batch had babies which stuck around and ate the aphids finally. I'm hoping they'll come back next year then, LOL* To hedge my bets Westelle, when I bought the 2nd batch, I saw Praying Mantis' at OSH, I didn't think the few Praying Mantis' I had last year would come back. Like I said every plant out there has a couple or more of them which is fine with me:) Oops...

Here are a couple of the 100 some toads out there. Some are lazy and come eat the left over canned cat food, LOL*
One worm I found was really fat, I threw it at one of the smaller toads. He just looked at it for a minute and then walked off. I took it to another area where I knew a bigger toad lived under a pot. He came out and ate it but he had to swallow about 4 times:) I threw him another a few minutes later but he refused to come out. I guess he was full. They're pretty fast, guess I need to use action speed:)
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Sorry those aren't better pics but it gives you the idea:)
Les

Wonderful pictures, Leslie!!! Oh, I do love mantises!! I've only found baby ones in my yard, so far, but there seem to be quite a few. I really like the looks on their faces, too, although if one gave me a toothy smile, I'd probably have a heart attack. LOL

In your 3rd pic, is that a large brown one off to the left? Your roses are just so gorgeous!

No toads for me, but plenty of little frogs, and one big bullfrog in the pond. I love the action shot of one of your toads! :)

I also killed my 2nd little tan grasshopper this year. *sigh* When we took the doggie for a walk down the road yesterday, I saw a large tan one fly off next to a field of safflower. Being surrounded by farmland, I hope they are just temporary nuisances until the next crop of whatever comes along. I don't think I could stand yet another pest! :)

Brenda

Hey Brenda! I hope your mouth is feeling much better:)
That 3rd pic is a toad trying to eat that worm in the 2nd toad pic. It's blurred because the little buggers move so fast. Or do you mean is there another in the pic? Possibly, they blend in with the bark so well:) I have to move really slow, I still have some that are only about a 1/4" big out there.

I've been killing grasshoppers too, babies, tan ones and green ones. And some really huge ones tan ones that I swear are like 4" big! Gross me out. I killed 5 hoppers day before and just two yesterday, one was a giant one. I flush them out with water and then kind of drill them with the water and hammer them on the ground while they're stunned from the water with the shower head on the hose. It's kind of a major ick factor, but I'm tired of them eatting on the roses and the canes. I don't see too much damage on the daylilies but they leave like spit all over the lavender and the mums. I keep washing that off. Sometimes I miss hammering them and have to do it again. Works best for me. Otherwise I'm chasing them all over the yard with a flyswatter which doesn't work but I'm sure it affords the neighbors with a lot of entertainment, LOL* I'm on at least my 3rd generation of hoppers since spring. They aren't flying off somewhere else here.

That's what I get for not spraying the ground in the early spring, they've been multiplying since the few I had early last year. Because I know the toads will show up in May, I don't want the ground sprayed. OTOH, I'm seeing an upswing in good bugs.

All my hollyhocks are being eaten, the foliage is by I assume the grasshoppers and other pests, but I have blooms. These are the oddest looks plants, they're on the short side, but I have very pretty blooms, thank you:) I have pink and mauve blooms, my favorite colors.

Hey, Leslie!! My mouth is doing a LOT better, thanks for asking! I'm still feeling quite a bit of sensitivity on one of my teeth, and I'm still babying the bone grafted one, taking Advil every day. Can't wait to stop THAT! I go in for Xrays of the graft on Tues., then he'll probably want to set up an appt. to do the top. *gulp*

Oh, the 3rd pic I meant was in your FIRST post. Sorry about that! LOL It looks like a large, brown mantis on the left, but I could be way off. :D

The foliage on my hollies looks terrible, too. I haven't seen many earwigs lately, and they LOVE them, so not sure what is eating them. I'm SO glad they're blooming for you, though! I've had only pinks and a maroon-colored one this year, so they must be reverting. I did find a healthy seedling a bit away from one of the parent plants, though. Hope it's a brand new color! :)

Brenda

I'm sorry it's taking so long to heal, that'd be a lot of cold blended mochas for me:) Of which I partake daily anyways, I make my own, latest are white chocolate. It must seem to heal in inches for you. I had half my roots scraped and chickened out on the other half of my mouth. I leave there with a headache about a #10 on the pain scale. I haven't been back and after hearing about you, guess I need to.

Yes, that's a brown mantis and I have white or cream colored ones out there too. Depends what colored rose or plant they're on that they're trying to blend in with. I have an ornamental grass near this that this one might have come over from.

I got a really cool pic of a small dragon fly, those are usually hard for me to catch here. Up in the mtns I had lots because of the water and they were a lot larger. This one kept coming back to this old lily. For awhile it looked like that mantis was going after it and then it turned away:)
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Earwigs huh, I thought it looked like something else eating on them. The blooms are ok, it's the foliage eaten up. I figured the grasshopers or some of the other pests. I've got a couple toads in the area, you'd think they'd take care of them:)