I decided to look up thrips in my book about greenhouse pests and beneficials. It seems they reproduce both sexually and asexually. There are 5 instar stages, egg,2 larva stages, prepupal, pupal and adult. The hotter the temperatures, the faster they go from egg to adult. Apparently thrips are really attracted to blue so some greenhouse growers hang blue sticky cards. I was wondering if you could paint stakes blue, smear with vaseline and catch them that way? The blue stakes might not look to bad with daylilies either. Think that would work? I read on the robin that one lady plants white allyssum to attract beneficials that eat the thrips. She says it worked for her. 'The most beneficial spray they have that shows promise is Metarhizium anisopliae, an entomopathogenic fungi. When the spores land on the thrips, they break through to the inside using enzymes and mechanical force. The insect dies within a few days.' Marg

Thanks, y'all! I live out in the country on 5 1/2 acres. The people next to me have 5 horses and a donkey, the people across the road have a lot of cows, and I've got 4 dogs, so there's plenty of uh, food for them around here. Such a strikingly colored bug coming from such stuff - amazing! Sherry

Thanks for posting, I'm in kind of a similar situation where I'm stepdad to a stepson I have a great deal of difficulty with. My wife handles all our finances-- I just hand her over my money. But lately we've been having huge problems over this stepson, and I resent the large amounts of money she spends on him, enabling him, it seems to me (I feel, tho, that if she wants to do that, it's her son, and she's entitled). I'm not even sure if she spends her own inherited money on him, or if it comes out of my money. Over the years, I've made little contribution to my own savings for old age, as I continue to support my wife. So I've been to a trusted therapist who told me that I need to be much more grown up about my own money, and to take control of that money so that everything is transparent, and fairly shared. And "fairly shared" doesn't mean that you have to put up money to support a stepchild you don't like (in my case, this kid has always treated me badly and continues to do so.) I'm seeing that marriage is about equal sharing of money, emotions and needs. And if your husband's needs don't match yours, then there needs to be some very clear discussion around that. I myself am scared of how my wife will react if I tell her that I don't want to have any of my money spent on this kid, and that I want my money to go to charity and not her kid, when I die. Her other son I like very much, and have no problem leaving him anything, or giving him anything. So, for me, it's about honoring myself and my own feelings of resentment, because, as the therapist told me, if you let these feelings go unspoken because you're scared of how the other person will react, the feelings just fester, and will do their damaging work anyhow. So better to be clear and up front about them. I also see that a stepfamily is NOT one big happy family as my wife would like us to be, and I can't go on pretending we're what we're not, and succumbing to what's beginning to feel like emotional blackmail. Hope this helps.

Well, they look like flat footed bugs and their nymphs. There are many different types. Here is one Leaffooted Bug Management Guidelines--UC IPM