Maggie - I am in the Philly area on the Montgomery County line. You mention Canadian Geese - I hope they don't take up residence where you are 'cause boy are they a nuisance and can defoliate any lawn within the reach of their beaks, let alone produce enough "fertilizer" to cover the now-bare area. YIKES! My mom not too far away, has maintained a bird bath for years - particularly for the robins. Whole families come yearly and whenever I'm there and she hasn't had chance to change the water, the robins start buzzing around the window and hopping around the yard complaining! LOL They like to sit in the bath and soak, sortof hogging it up from other birds. But those other birds have learned that if they come early, they can get a quick drink before the robins settle in during the late afternoon. When the robins are done, the water is almost black! Thus the drop of Chlorox. binki - glad you got rain. We had nothing here. I watched as a few patches of rain approached on the doppler radar and then dissipated before it got here.

Can't say enough about the benefits of predatory "bugs", our true bugs. Nothing makes me happier than to see a cog wheel bug or an assassain bug perched quietly among my plants, waiting patiently for an unsuspecting catepillar to come strolling past. And the next time you start to swat a fly, you might want to see what kind it is...some of our most common flies also parasitise caterpillars. We are so caught up in our need for immediate gratification...we really want to see results NOW. It is tough to reassuringly tell yourself about balance and long-term fluctuations when you can see the damage being done to a prized planting on a daily basis. And there isn't always a handbook to tell you what the threshold is-the point at which you either take evasive action or suffer a complete loss. I am reminded of the cicada hatching we had here several years back. All you could do was clap your hands over your ears when you went out and stare in disbelief at the branches completely covered with those shiny black insects. How could the trees possibly survive that sucking screaming carpet? But then things quiet down eventually and the scavengers clean up the last of the carcasses and you see that aside from a few dead branches and weakened individual trees, they came out of it ok. Unless the invader is a foreign one and the ecosystem has no defenses for the newcomer, there is always a check and balance.

Wasps are very beneficial -- unless you are raising butterly caterpillars. Their sole food is caterpillars. Malcome Beck tells a story about a man who had a pecan orchard. His nephew came and spent the summer and for entertainment with a sling shot he knocked down all the paper wasps nests he could find. The man was plagued by tent caterpillars on his pecan trees for years afterward until the wasps were able to restore their numbers. Even though I have plants for the butterflies to use as food for their larva I let the paper wasps stay. There are enough caterpillars from other sources to keep them going and they don't take too many butterfly babies. Paper wasps are very non-agressive and I can reach near their nests, but they don't sting unless I inadvertently bump the nest. My wasps have come to recognize me, they are the genuises of the insect world, and even if I do bump the nest they just give me a little warning buzz fly by, or at most a tiny sting, so tiny I don't even bother putting anything on it. I've had huge nests hanging right over the patio door where people go in and out all the time and the wasps never pay them any mind. Now the big red wasps are a different matter. They like to nest in cavities like empty decorative bird houses in the eaves of the house and are more agressive. They are more likely to sting if you walk close by. Muddaubers are related to wasps and are very VERY non agressive. They are solitary nesters and don't nest in a group like paper wasps. You can be touching their mud nest and they do nothing. If you caught one in your hand and held it they might sting of course. The sole food of muddaubers are spiders which they collect and pack into the cells of their mud houses (which look like tiny pueblos to me) and lay a egg on them. They then seal the chamber and the larve feed on the spiders. Malcome Beck said he opened many nests and found 90 percent of the spiders contained in them were black widow spiders. Of course it depends on your population of spiders. I have found many spiders in the nest when I used to open them as a child that I had never seen before in the garden. While I like garden spiders -- they do their job in the garden also by catching insects, I appreciate that nature keeps bug populations in better balance than I could by using insecticides or knocking down wasp and muddaubers nests. I would never have believed it possible, but I have had no damaging insect problems since I stopped using insecticides. There are other types of wasps, some that nest in the ground that look like bees. I can stand and walk by the hole where they are coming and going and they never pay any attention. Neither do the large cicada killers. There may be some other agressive wasps, but I don't know about them. As to bees, which are the subject of this thread, they are very non-agressive when foraging away from the hive -- whether honey bees, bumble bees or other wild bees. I get right in the middle of them while they are working the flowers to take pictures and they just get out of the way. Happy gardening the natural way.

Here's the location, but right now it's covered in Zinnias!... it's a little nook by the stairs to my deck. I've always planted annuals there b/c I've wanted to do a pond for years and just never have. I have the basin, pump, and outlet ready, but am just hoping to get the mosaicing done by the end of summer/fall. I'll probably wait til next season to actually set it up as a fountain otherwise I'd end up having to take it right out again for the winter... besides the zinnias will bloom til frost and I just can't dig them out... they are so beautiful! If you look at my garden pictures... the picture of the white clematis is what's behind the zinnias which is now done blooming. In anticipation of this fountain I planted 2 new ornamental grasses, but they're so small right now you can barely see them behind the zinnias. Here is a link that might be useful: My garden