I think scotch thistle was brought over here by the ornamental trade. I spend several days a year grubbing it out of the front 5 acres. I spent a lot of money getting rid of Quinoa akbea that was strangling a bunch of trees in some land that I shared with my sisters in Pennsylvania and we all lived far away. It was way into the canopies of trees and had a 3 acre spread and branches were breaking, trees dying. One thing to think about in comparing Europe to the US is the amount of wild land that isn't gardened and this land can be invaded. I live close to a 3000 acre park, and a couple 8000 acre ranches. No one is out their weeding. Invasives are a problem. They blow in from the suburbs. They get brought in in hay bales. That is how I got Johnson grass. Birds bring vine berries.Yellow star malta thistle has taken over 15 million acres in California and it causes horses to get a neurological condition that keeps them from swallowing so they chew and chew and die of starvation. IyT is in the cattle guard and on my list to poison. One can drive through States and states of Kudzo and then one enters the Mile a minute hanging forests of west virginia,virginia and Kentucky and then the Appalachians full of multiflora rose and Jappanese knotweed. It is sad to see the landscape in distress. I have an fragrant mimosa in my yard. It is a native and it Makes A LOT of seed but there's a bug that lives and bores into almost every seed and lays an egg or something in each one. I would not advise taking it to England without a good population of that bug. It is hard to pull out with a wicked deep root and spreads by its root too. It is in balance here, and I love its fragrance, but I can see that if that bug wasn't here, it would be a bugger. The thing about invasive lists is they are the plants that are already out of the gate. The ones that are just gathering steam have not been addressed. It gets so confusing because a plant van be a real problem in one place and not be a problem 20 miles away.Globalization with its ease of shipping plant material and the stepped up pace of plant introduction of these last decades is going to bite us in the @ss.

Hal: Thanks fer the reply! Yeah, i wasn't thinkin when i said to put those things on the antlers of a lady deer! Then again, the lady driver would be too busy trying to find a lady deer's antlers, that she'd stay off the roads, thereby protecting us from her driving! Not that i have any problems with lady drivers--there's certainly a big bunch of lady truck drivers out there, who seem to have it all together! Its just that some folks fall fer those things, like deer alerts. I had a friend who swore by them, but he hit more deer than i ever did. I kind of figgered the deer would be out on the roads looking fer whatever was makin' that goofy noise, then when they'd find it, they'd cozy up to it! My friend got mad when i told him where to put them. (On the bottom of the oil pan, or in the glove box--not that other place) Well, back to work winterizing my motor home. Have a bit more to do, then i can sit down with a brewski and relax! Rusty

This is a true threat but is easily identified. Executable attachments (ending in ".exe") should never be opened from an unknown source without at least scanning it. This shows the danger of using one email address too. Whenever I use a throwaway address and get an email that says there's a problem with my account, I laugh. Vendors do not contact people this way. People really need to educate themselves to the basic dangers. Lately there's been a big downturn in the number of viruses out there because people did get affected enough to start using antivirus programs. Then it turned more to "malware" including spyware and the like. Now however, people have become complacent and forget about the importance of securing a computer. All too many get a new computer and rather than doing the correct thing, that is to secure it, they immediately go online to try it out and tell everyone about the new machine. And they get infected. Now that there's a numbness to the true threat of viruses, people not having, using and/or updating antivirus, firewalls, etc, we can probably expect more to come but at the same time, there'll likely be the hoax problem too, which can be just as bad, if not worse. Think of it this way: When you open email, and for that matter surfing the net to a point, you're having sex with everyone on the internet. Are you going to use protection? You should have a good firewall. Windows is not a good firewall. You should have an antivirus program and update it regularly. You should have an antispyware program and perhaps more than one. It's a good idea to avoid using Internet Explorer as your browser, but if you do you should at least secure it as best you can. Also keep in mind that when you receive emails that are suspicious, it's not difficult to do some checking. Look at the attachments before you open them and never let your computer open them automatically. One of the most dangerous phrases out there is "send this to everyone you know" because people feel a need to do this. I get a little worked up about this because for some reason people feel compelled to do whatever an email says to do. Accordingly, they normally send far more hoaxes than they do factual information. And 2 minutes of basic research would usually show the difference. Operating a computer is much like operating a car. With the right comes responsibility and if you don't show the responsibility you can easily lose your rights. You owe it to yourself, but more importantly, you owe it to others to use the vehicle responsibly, whether the vehicle is a car or computer. People wouldn't be writing the viruses, spyware, etc, if they weren't effective. Taking simple precautions will render them much less effective. Don't be afraid of computers or the internet but be informed enough to protect yourself. Not trying to come off as a lecture, just a precaution. Here's wishing you happy and safe computing.

This year I have found the search and destroy method very effective. From April through to June I checked the lilies over at least once a day, killing up to 20 beetles each time. I found a few larvae to dispose of but not too many - unlike last year when I had plants totally infested with them. And since the end of June - almost nothing to be found! It all seems too simple. Now, I have seen a few leaves with irregular patches nibbled out of them........if only God had had the foresight to colour vine weevil bright pink.