Hi; I'd like to add my two cents worth....we have a 3 year old rescue kitty. I believe there was a bit of pot inhalation in his first year, so that might account for his plant predilections, but he is an insatiable rose eater. He prefers the blossoms, but if I break those off, he's happy enough with the leaves. I overwintered a couple minis indoors, and had to keep them wrapped in bird netting to keep him from defoliating them. So, this might be a baby phase with your kitten, and he might be teething, but there's no guarantee he'll outgrow it! Our cat is very social, and likes to be with us when we garden; we spend a lot of time with the roses, so this may be part of what attracts him. Of course, he'll eat any florist flowers we bring into the house, too...SIGH. So, I guess you'll either have to not spray, or spray with cat friendly things, or put something down in your rose beds that the cat finds aversive (moth balls, maybe? I know there are smells that horrify our cat, but can't think what they are. Probably if we hung bacon from the roses, he'd stay away. SUCH a strange cat). You can also try some behavior mod with the hose when the kitten approaches the plants. That would have been a permanent fix with my old cat, but I think Mike has just learned that he's not to eat the roses when mommy is around. No, who am I kidding, he hasn't learned that. ;) Hope that helps; Lara

Are you sure it's wasps? Are they half circles out of your rose leaves? If that's the case, it is cutter bees doing the damage. The use the rose leaves to build their nests. The good news is, the damage is only cosmetic, but does not hurt the rose. The bad news is it can make your roses look pretty rough sometimes. Since they do not ingest the leaves, theres nothing you can do to kill them. About the only solution is to put shade cloth or something like that completely around the bushes to protect them. Of course the bad side to this is, you can't enjoy the roses. They generally dont' hack away for too long, so I would just not worry to much about it. Easy

I just came across one crawling along a big leaf of swiss chard (no evidence of munching). I just relocated him to the back of the garden and let him be. I've rarely run across more than one or 2 per season (the sandy coloured one and/or the black with brown band in the middle guy), so I don't see their numbers as too threatening. I googled what they'd look like as adults and have never seen the adult virginian moth, maybe once came across a tiger moth. As for those numerous white cabbage butterflies flitting about all over the place, whenever I find a green slender caterpillar (and I suspect that is their larvae form) I 'rub' them out. As often as I do that, it doesn't seem to affect their population the following year!

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.