I've never seen sap under a phal leaf without finding culprits, tho sometimes you have to look and look til you find them, and they are excellent hiders. The question is where to look, and the answer is look everywhere one of the little buggers can hide. Aphids usually go for tender new growth and wouldn't be on the relatively tough underside of a phal leaf. So look for mealies (white cottony blobs) or scale (bumps that slide off-- ie clearly are not dings). They are hiding somewhere pretty successfully, or you would have seen them already. So look under the leaves, and especially in the junction where the leaf attaches to the stem. It's astonishing the places they can find to hide. I have found them in the leaf junction of a tiny old seedling leaf still hanging on to the stem of a fairly biggish phal, but hidden away below now big newer leaves. Bend the leaf back as far as you dare without breaking it to look inside. I have even found them nestled in the center of a tiny new leaf, the devils. They also hide out in the nodules on a flower stem. I once had a recurring infestation of mealies on a spike of a Doritis hybrid. Those spikes last and last, and the infestation kept coming back, always on the flowers (they *love* flowers). Finally, I cut the flower stem and peeled the covering off the nodules on it. Sure enough, every undeveloped nodule had mealies tucked inside ready to get on the flower when it developed. So check every flower all over with an eagle eye. However, usually sap under the leaf means there is a pest somewhere nearby on that or a nearby leaf. If you use a systemic you are more likely to get them, since they can spread all over, even below the medium. Be sure to spray a lot of stuff in the leaf junction as they can get in there pretty far and you can't always bend the leaf far enough back to see them. Think of it as a safari. :)

I have not spoken to NN about the hall county event although I plan on calling them about some plants and was going to specifically ask. They are not on the vendor list yet. Spring Expo 2011. I don't think you can help but love winterberry. Bees love it in spring, the foliage is attractive and the berries stunning. Bluebirds love it! I planted 3 and a year later, 3 more. I want to attend the GNPS - particularly the "Native Plants and Transportation Projects in Georgia: Constraints and Opportunities" - but may be out of town. Won't know until next week.

UPDATE: So it took me a total of two days to properly douse each hosta accordingly. My god do they spread. I discovered them Saturday afternoon and by the time I was done yesterday night the ones I had left for a day had almost doubled. Either way, all plants that needed to get hosed, got it. I will reapply in 7 days and then again 7 days after that. From there on I will use the water treatment for prevention and maintenance. Steve . Thank you for the advice with the Lady Bugs. I won’t waste my money since I wouldn’t be releasing them indoors. Kind of makes sense now that you mention it, silly me. :) I did order earthworms this year for Bed#1 to start them working in the soil and compost. A lot easier to contain something if you bury it, ‘eh ? Miss Mocc . You flatter me with your kind words. Yes, they are my children for all intents and purposes. As any parent can sympathize, when your kids get sick you make ‘em better. Granted I would never spray a human child with insecticidal soap . . . wait . . . maybe I would . . . that is a different thread all together. :p I know aphids seem small fry in comparison to what I could be dealing with, but a nuisance is a nuisance and given my overly dramatic nature, any ant hill gets renovated into a mountain after I am done with it. A wise friend advised to NUKE ‘EM . . . and so I did. Phil . You are indeed blessed to be able to garden in a more “natural setting” than I, who is unfortunately in the heart of suburbia where the soil is back filled with field stone and the bored housewives (no offense) spray raid on anything that crawls. Ken . Unfortunately I had to spray the entire plant for some. I guess I can suffer a year without my blue wax if it means the plants will be healthier overall. But, thank you as always for your sound advice. If I didn’t have them hiding in every crevice I might have been able to spray more strategically. But I was also going for overkill. I am a newbie after all. :) Miss Babka . Thank you so much for the info about the nozzle. I looked over the website that Ci_lantro provided and agree, I will most definitely be soaked after using this, but the design is genius. I am committed to a three week soap treatment, but plan to administer future maintenance with this lovely new toy you’ve shown me. WW . Thank you for your support and keep up the good fight. We are all in this together. :) Sandy . I intend to do just that after the soap treatments are done. I will be ordering the special nozzle that Babka recommended to get the job thoroughly done. Jan . That handsome guy is ‘Cascades’, one of my top ten personal favorites. There are a bunch of posts recently about it where I posted other pics. Hope I can enable you to give him a shot in your garden. :) Don . leave it to you to make me laugh amidst panic. Thank you, Sir. Ci_lantro . Thank you sooooo much for the link. This made my life a lot easier when I began to search for it via online retailer. I wasn’t about to hold my breath that my local garden center would carry something this specialized. Hostafrenzy . I will take you up on that offer. Did you ever go back and look at those posts ? They are literally seconds apart. That was uncanny timing. You are right, I do baby them. Maybe a little too much, but I am still young and my enthusiasm it peaked. I can’t help but obsess over them. For some it seems to help ::cough Andrew cough::, but others I’m finding like to be left alone (Mikado). TJ . I agree with you 100% and plan to use the water treatments in the future, but since this was the first infestation and a pretty bad one at that, I am not taking any chances. Like Steve said, the soap is organic and does not persist, so I don’t have quite as much guilt. Again, thank you everyone for your support and gracious information. We are made stronger by what doesn’t kill us. Granted it was only aphids, but the hysterics this caused me might as well have been palpitations. Ludi

Love the bluebirds and winterberry pics, Susan! Nothing is trying to eat the winterberries here yet. No juncoes here yet, but the first white-throated sparrow of the fall/winter season appeared early this morning. They don't spend their summers here. I'm still seeing hordes of grackles, around 30 this morning, and the white-throat disappeared when the grackles came. I don't usually see so many grackles now - I wonder if the drought has affected their alternate feeding grounds. This is a picture of grackles a week ago with the winterberry in the background. Claire