Good, Bad and Ugly

I haven't been in the mood much for writing lately as I have been trying to balance my daily chores with periods of inactivity!!!! I made a list of to do things before Kay went home to Kuala Lumpur to visit her family and I have been trying not to do too many jobs all at once as I firmly believe in the adage "Don't do everything today as there will be nothing to do tomorrow".
I have already completed Page 1 of my list and I have had to look around for items for Page 2, which I have already started. But .... I have really been waiting for the perfect "photo opportunity" to present itself, and it did yesterday just before the rain started.

When we were living in Launceston, we had friends who we used to visit quite regularly and John managed to befriend a family of kookaburras, not tame them, but just give them some food and they brought tremendous amounts of joy to all of us at the barbies. They would sit on the clothesline waiting for the titbits that were on offer.

I have had a kookaburra perched on the back fence several times now (not in the gum tree as the song goes, as we don't have a gum tree!!) and as yet I have not been able to get too close to him (or her) and I haven't managed yet to catch some lizards to feed it, but I am working on that. They are sometimes referred to as "laughing Jackasses" but I think this is a derogatory term and should not be used for these beautiful birds. Old-timers will tell you that when they start their "laugh", it warns of impending rain after a dry spell. So far that has been proven by this little fellow. He sang his heart out, and not long after, the rain came, not much but a good drop for the garden. I hope he hangs around for a while.

After the good news ... now the bad. Just look at these ugly brutes:

   This little one does look  quite spectacular with its colours but it devastates citrus trees.            

 And this whopper!! It is just hanging after I sprayed it with ant poison, believe it or not. It seems to be doing the job and I wish I had tried it earlier. I was using a dust and the wind would blow most of it away and the butterflies would just lay their eggs without a care. Now a quick spray and problem solved ... I hope!!!

  This is a medium sized caterpillar, in comparison to the other two, but it does the same damage to citrus trees. They have left the mango, bananas and other fruit trees alone and seem to concentrate on the lemons, limes and mandarins. I don't know why!!



When we look at a caterpillar all we see are the wonderful colours and the knowledge that they will evolve into beautiful butterflies. But those beautiful butterflies lay more eggs which in turn become caterpillars and destroy our plants, then the cycle begins again. They are so sneaky that the buttlerflies often lay their eggs on the underside of the leaf so you don't know they are there until they start munching away.

This is the destruction of a kafir lime that has been eaten by caterpillars. Unfortunately I didn't find them in time so I had to do some drastic pruning so that, hopefully, the new growth will develop after the caterpillar season, if there is one here in Queensland. That's all I need if they breed all year round!!! But we didn't have this damage last year either.
I will just have to keep spraying and hoping.

Maybe my mate the kookaburra can be trained to eat the caterpillars and do my job for me. Well, I am allowed to dream sometimes.