Tonight I am going to bring back an old series. Here is post number eleven in my Flora and Fauna series. The last time I made a post in this series was in 2015 with Flora and Fauna X – Jena.

On Monday I released some ladybugs into my rose garden. See: Time for Ladybugs

This morning I took some pictures of the ladybugs on the roses bushes.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of mildew on my Tropicana rose bush. However, this is fairly common for some old hybrid tea roses.

I am not sure why they are seem to like the dead and dying leaves of the rose bush. Perhaps they were full of aphids and they had a feast.

It was fun trying to find the ladybugs. I would look intently trying to find them and then would all of a sudden seem to see them everywhere.

Here a ladybug is at the center of a spent rose bloom. It made for an interesting picture.

Here a ladybug is on a very dirty leaf. There seems to be debris all over it. Some of it is bits of blossoms left from the trees that are in the front yard, but I am not sure what the little black specks are. I am actually going to have to be a bit careful doing any pruning over the next couple weeks as I watch out for ladybug eggs. I have see a few ladybug larvae on the rose bushes so I know I at least had some ladybugs around before releasing the ones on Monday.

Tonight I released the rest of the ladybugs that I had bought. It looks like the first group has established itself pretty good and has been hard at work. I can already see a difference in the number of aphids in some areas.

Steven