Ladybug Central, April 29, 2009

So, at our house these days we are overwhelmed by ladybugs. This is a good thing for my roses, as they were recently overwhelmed with aphids. This seems to have abated and the boys are loving to have some many beautiful "lady bird beetles" as my biology teacher would have corrected me, in our little front yard. We put together a holding tank for them so that Vinny could share them with Daddy in the evening. Vinny is becoming quite the ladybug wrangler, snagging a record of 10 in one afternoon. I suppose there is something to be said for not being a great gardener (it frequently just looks overgrown). It has provided the boys we hours of pleasure during piano lessons. I like that they get to be outside and they like that I am not shadowing their every move. Gianni has taken to calling every bug a bee and running from them despite our best efforts to get him to say ladybugs. While he has finally got Vinny and Gianni down in his vocabulary, this seems to have eluded him. He talks more and more each day and it is great fun to have him join in on the conversation. He understands more than he says, but he has Yes, No and Okay down just fine and will carry on a conversation for quite awhile and be able to communicate what he needs or at least wants.
But, back to ladybugs. We agreed from the beginning that it would be a catch and release program. Every night Vinny releases the ladybugs just before his bath so that they can eat and rejoin their family. There is a small snag though. Gianni has figured out how to untwist the lid, so there are frequently some escapees, this is exacerbated by the fact that Mom may have punched one of the air holes a little too big. Frequently these days we find ladybugs on us, or the walls or the window trying to get out. We then will gently move them to the door so that they can go back outside and eat our aphids. Vinny has a very good understanding of what Ladybugs eat and he is always on the lookout for aphids to feed them. Just yesterday I found him relocating ladybugs from our garden to the lawn in front our our house because he thought they were hungry and there would be more aphids in the lawn. After explaining that we have all the aphids they'll ever need, he relocated them again, back to the mint. I just love watching them explore and enjoy the outside. I hope it never ends.