thanks, i kept lookn on the internet over the last couple days, searching for things like common tomato pest, etc., and i knew that the Col. P beetle does attack tomatoes when all else fails, but i can't remember seeing an internet site that mentioned the CPB as one of the tomatoes primary pests. I sprayed with red hot pepper wax, we'll see how that goes. thanks again

Hi Jeri my garden is planted with lots of Aussie Native flora and I have plenty of birds in my garden at present, with Spring here there are baby chicks hatching here too all they seem to be interested in is having baths in their drinking water or diving into the lily pond for a bit of a swim... These Rainbow and Scaly-breasted Lorikeets come for there Annual visit 2 days ago they are seed/nectar eaters and the only work they do in the garden is the pruning off of the pretty flowers. The local residents seem to go for the moths that are around at this time of the year, mind you the Ladybird larvae do a good job of trying to keep those numbers of aphids down but what a marvelous idea Joan I will try that with a paint brush.. Thanks .. Mary-Anne.

I'm not totally sure that is society garlic in the last picture, but it's easy to tell. Just break a piece off. Society garlic smells VERY strongly of...guess what?...garlic! *grin* If not, then it's another grass of some sort. The little pineappley plants could be a spiny type of bromeliad. We have one that will cut you to ribbons when it grows up, if you aren't careful. The one we have has gorgeous blooms on it, though, so we just plant it in the center of the brom bed so no one brushes up against it. I don't know the name of it, sorry. (But this is just a guess. Maybe they really ARE pineapples?) Marcia

Yeah, it's that one that folks don't know the name of. :) Seriously, no, there isn't a plant with the official name of Mystery Plant. You see monikers like that tacked onto ordinary plants in those cheap Sunday supplements and low-end garden catalogs to entice naive gardeners. And sometimes people just attach a "name" like that to a plant cuz they don't know the real name, and then pass it along. Although many folks have an aversion to scientific names, this is why they exist. Common names are all over the map, and are often unhelpful in telling you what plant you've got. Get a little more info from the guy, anything he can remember about the plant such as plant habit (e.g. bushy and clumping? running like a groundcover? etc), height, leaf shape (e.g. strap-like? heart-shaped? etc) and arrangement (e.g. rosette? growing off the stems? etc) and flower shape (e.g. daisy-like, petunia-like, etc), bloom arrangement (e.g. in a flat-topped cluster? single bloom? in a spike? etc) and flower color. With that info we could take a good whack at getting an ID. Marty