A Prickly Situation..

We have a prickly situation here....

 a Prickly Pear, situation.

This is the Prickly Pear 

(Opuntia engelmanii)

 I transplanted from the Deer Grove.

It has grown a lot, since then. In fact, this is just HALF

of it, when we moved it from the side yard,

to the Drive Bed.

This is how it looked last year,

This is how it looks now.

It's really spread out.

It's full of buds.

But, this is how they end up.

They try to open, but they get the life sucked out of them.

By these...

Hesperolabops gelastops.

In other words, Cactus bugs.

They suck the juices out of the pads.

See the damage to this new pad?

They've been making a mess, out of the whole thing.

The treatment is blasts of water, or soapy water...

or Neem...

There are hundreds of these vile little creatures.

And, they're fast...running to the other side of the pads,

when you walk up.

So far, I've been trying soapy water...

going around and around the cactus, trying to hit them.

More entertainment for the neighbors.

Maybe they think it's some kind of 'Cactus Ritual'...

So far, the bugs are still there.

I'll keep trying the soap.

Then, I may have to go to the big guns.

I'll let you know, how it goes.

The marks on this cactus are from the hail we had a week or so ago.

Can't do anything about that.

But, at least no bugs....

yet.

With gardening...

it's always something.

Happy Gardening...

~~Linda~~

May 1...

Well...we made it to May.

Bet you didn't think you'd hear from me so soon.

The night after my last post,

showing you all the work and pretty iris,

we had quite a storm.

At 3:00 in the morning.

What is it with 3:00 in the morning, for storms here?

Like Halloween, it seems to be some kind of cosmic signal.

Anyway...

It hailed...

Not huge hail...but, larger than we liked.

(the wine cork was the closest thing I had, for scale. 

That was really good wine, on our cruise.)

The worse part was the wind.

Reports are, we had gusts to 60 or 70 mph.

It tried to pull up the windmill.

We've had 60 mph here before,

and the windmill never budged.

It brought down some good sized limbs here.

And, just generally made a mess.

More clean up!

How lucky can a girl get?

We were really lucky, though.

No real damage.

But, it did do some damage next door.

Giant limbs, from two different trees, came crashing down.

It landed on the AC unit. Didn't do it much good.

But, even then, they were lucky.

It missed the roof, and the car in the driveway.

It wasn't long before people arrived with equipment,

and before evening, those limbs were firewood and mulch.

There were the sounds of chainsaws all over the neighborhood.

But, I haven't heard of any injuries or big damage.

We were all lucky, here.

The storm kept going, creating much more damage.

I hope none of you were in it's path.

Stay Safe...

~~Linda~~