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These are gypsy moth caterpillars, I did a lot of reading to identify them when they first appeared last year. I don't know where they came from or why they landed on my property since I'm not seeing any sign of damage in the neighbourhood. It's the same with my snowball bush, other people have them with no sign of lacy leaves. (I know there are a lot of different shrubs that are called snowballs, this is a shade tolerant bush with maple like leaves and small tennis ball sized flowers).
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CWillie, were the caterpillars the little black ones that create webs? Tent caterpillars I think? They infest some of the vacant land areas here and create massive nests. I've seen them occasionally in the annoying peanut butter trees (I can't for the life of me remember the correct name of them at this moment).

On a more positive note, my peonies are in bloom, the heat has finally gone and isn't predicted to return for about 10 days, and it's wonderfully cool and relaxing here.

There's another volunteer flower which I haven't identified; it's about 2 feet tall and has lilac flowers, not quite spikes but toward the top of the plant with the lower stems just producing leaves.

I grew some Liatris years ago, and it might be that it decided to move from the sunny portion to the shady portion. Or maybe the volunteer squirrel gardening brigade decided to rearrange plants, as they have done with tulips and daffodils for years.

I suspect I have a Gertrude Jekyll squirrel that wants its own garden.


This is one of those times when I wish I had a "summer room" attached to the house; I'd go out and take a nice nap in the chilly weather, inhaling the refreshing fragrance of this morning's rain. Fresh coffee, a nice breeze, fragrant air....what more could I ask for on a Sunday morn?

BTW, I think you asked sometime ago if deer could have been responsible for dispatching my burgundy trillium. The first time the flowers disappeared was several years ago; the following year I wrapped fencing around the plant and the flowers remained. I haven't had a problem again until this year.

I haven't seen the doe since that one night, but it's possible she came back for dessert. I thought of rabbits because I've seen them for years. I may have posted this before, but one little sweetie became used to me after I put out food for it, and one day snuggled up to my foot, crawled up, and took a nap.

That was a very special time.
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I've been eyeballing my spruce tree when I'm outside and everything looked OK, but then I looked out my window at dusk and realized the caterpillars - thousands of them - are hiding during the day and coming out to feed at night. I knew that one treatment with insecticidal soap was too good to be true. Yesterday I pulled out the big guns and sprayed as much as I could reach with Raid® (which also finally put an end to the sawfly infestation on my snowball bush). So it's a non organic synthetic pyrethrin. But it works.
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Linda- that is so interesting, I too am interested in natural dyes.
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GA, I grew the woad from seed. In many states, it's considered an invasive plant. It's a biennial in that you harvest the first year leaves, then the second year, you harvest seed.  If you google woad and hit images, you usually get a photo of Mel Gibson as Braveheart in full woad war paint.  There are a number of things like berries that stain but make weak dyes. Like purple cabbage. And some bright flowers yield boring tan colors - that's half the fun is discovering what makes great dye. The dried skins from onions make a good dye and you don't need a lot. I do set the dye with heat - I can get about 150F in a canning jar in my homemade solar getup. It's hot enough to set but not hot enough to felt the yarn. Sometimes, I heat the yarn and dye on the stove.  To adjust ph, I use washing soda (sodium carbonate) or baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to raise the ph and citric acid or vinegar to lower the ph.  
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Linda, thanks so much for sharing your experiences. Would you mind if I consulted you when I start experimenting with plant dyes? Seriously.

I've been redesigning the master plan for my garden and think I'll create a Dyeing Garden, although I'll try to think of a different name that's less ominous when I say it. Maybe a Needlework Garden, with a geometric arrangement of plants (I've been working on incorporating triangles, circles, and rectangles in various configurations inside the beds) which can be used for dyeing.

I've found that picking raspberries turns my fingers red. I'll have to figure out a way to pick them while protecting them from bleeding, so that that the red actually bleeds into a dye mixture.

I had to look up Woad; I'd never heard of it before. Did you grow it from seed? Buy the plant? I see it's in the Brassicaceae family. I'm wondering now if broccoli or cabbage could be used for dying? Any experience with those?

Would you mind sharing some more experience when I get started? I.e., when you dye full skeins, how do you ensure that the dye is applied equally to all the yarn, or do you dye the yarn first, then skein it?

Do you have to "set" the dye" by boiling it in hot water, or something similar, after it's colored?

I remember my Grandmother used "old country" traditions when boiling eggs for Easter and used the brownish or red skins of onions.

Have you ever made a multicolored mix? I'm thinking of greens to blues to purples.

Oh, I'm so excited now that I've got to run upstairs and look through my bookcase (3 shelves worth!) of books and magazines and see if I can find a dye book that I might have bought in the last 50 or so years.


If I don't figure out the issue of pH, I'll be back to ask for help! I was thinking that some plants are sensitive to pH, but is there another way to adjust it, such as adding something like salt to the dye water?

Thanks for sharing this information.
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GA, i grow plants for yarn dyeing. I've been dyeing yarn for three years. What got me started was reading about the natural dyes used by Navajo rug weavers. I spent the first year dyeing small samples of yarn with various plants. Last year, I moved up to dyeing full skeins for knitting. Last year, I grew woad, which gave me 15 grams of pretty blue sock yarn. It's a form of indigo and is it a process to extract! The yarn was this sickly green/yellow then it hit the oxygen in the air and turned blue in front of my eyes.
I have coreopsis going this year (2nd year plants) and that makes the most gorgeous true orange. Altering the ph of the dye changes the color (ranges from tuscan red to orange to golden yellow). Marigolds are another one I use. And avocado pits and skins go kind of apricot-coral. My husband smiled that I'm the only person he knows who makes guacamole as a by product of dyeing. It's a great hobby - not very expensive, little equipment, can be done in small amounts of time. The sun is strong here so I extract the dye in the sun and also dye the yarn in the sun.
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It's heartwarming to "meet" others who still do needlework by hand. There's so much pleasure in it, so much reward, especially when carried through generations.

Given that we're going to have a succession of close to and above 90 degree temps for the next 4 days, I might just hunker down with lemonade, fans, and needles or hooks and be creative.

I also have multiple embroidery projects that have been shelved for years.


As to aphids, or other little bugs, after a few hand squishes, I decided to use latex or vinyl medical gloves. I have them anyway for other cleaning projects. Drop the unwanted visitors into a baggie, seal it, and step on it. and squash them.

CW, I've never heard of those methods but they definitely are on my list if my roses are plagued again this year by those annoying little worms that have encamped on my hybrids in the past years. That's when I started using gloves and baggies.
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CW thank you. I like both of those ideas. Never would have thought of the tomato spray.
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I think insecticidal soap spray would be less fussy than neem oil. Two intriguing homemade methods to control aphids I've found on the Spruce are:
1/tomato leaf spray - chop one or two cups of tomato leaves and soak them in two cups of water. Let it steep overnight, strain and spray.

2/garlic and soapy water - mince or finely chop three to four cloves of garlic, and add them to two teaspoons of mineral oil. Let this mixture sit for 24 hours. Strain out the garlic pieces, and add the remaining liquid to one pint of water. Add one teaspoon of liquid dish soap.
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CM I always wondered what wasps were good for. I did scrape some aphids off, eeek, not fun. There are so many. Shop have caught it sooner. Yes, indeed there are ants. I need to get rid of those too. Back to work on the critters..
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Spirit, you're probably not going to like this but the best advice from the RHS is "hand squishing." Easy and painless but feels like terrible karma and makes your fingers gungy.

You also want to "encourage hoverflies, ladybirds and other predators." I have no idea how you do this, mind. I have tried asking them nicely, luring them onto Kleenexes and rehoming them on my roses, gentle wafting with a newspaper, pretty much everything short of loyalty cards or free coffee; but the hoverflies and ladybirds invariably make their way back to whichever plant they'd chosen, thank you very much, and it's never the one with the **@!±) greenfly on it.

Wasps, at this time of year, also eat aphids AND carry them back to the nest to feed their own larvae. Which is why the experts tell you not to hate wasps, they are your friends. Phooey, is what I say. My friends do not sting me in the face *for nothing*.

Are there also ants? Observe the echinacea for a few minutes, and see if there are ants traipsing up and down the plant. If there are, these are farmer ants and they are milking the aphids for their honeydew; it is quite possible that they even carried the immature aphids there in the first place. What you do about it is up to you and depends on how important your green credentials are to you. Personally I am still wrestling with my conscience about it; but if my lovely viburnum starts looking any more miserable I shall set my jaw and put down some ants' nest killers.
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Little bugs, I think aphids, eating on my echinacea plants already. Sprayed neem oil on them and hoping for the best. Neem is so messy and smells. Any other concoctions to try?
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GA- I would love a spinning wheel, sheep and to spin my own.
I crochet. It is something I can do in the car on long trips and when I am tired, but always have the desire to be productive in everything I do. So I can't just sit to sit, so I took up crocheting, and sewing. its neat to turn nothing into something useful or pretty.
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DD2 knits and crochet lots for her girls. Those hobbies skipped a generation well two actually. Mom didn't but taught me to knit when I was in the hospital at about seven years old. Gave me something to do I guess. Never picked it up again. But mom's mom, what a knitter she was! Still have some of the sweaters that grand daughters wear now.

I was quite the seamstress, loved it, mom taught me that. And my daughters always had such beautiful clothes. Homecoming and prom dresses. And of course Halloween costumes that even my son loved.
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There’s a family in Sullivan who spins and dyes yarn. They do knitting for several businesses. They also have woolen looms and do beautiful plaid woolens. I used to knit, but haven’t for a long time.
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Becky, I'm envious! I don't know how to use one either, although I've seen demonstrations but that was a long time ago. I think one of the demonstrations was at Greenfield Village, which is a village with a range of historic buildings demonstrating craftsman like techniques.

I think another demonstration was at one of the best craft shows in the area. Held in a charming little park with a small stream populated with chattering ducks, it's always in September, and captures the beginning of the fall fragrances of drying leaves coupled with freshly mown grass.

There used to be an exhibitor who brought Romney Marsh sheep and sold fleeces. I can't recall the characterization of the fleeces, but I think they were "roaming" fleeces. I guess that fleeces can be sold just after sheering, w/o having been cleaned, or they can be cleaned up and then sold.

Now I've got to go upstairs and caress some balls of yarn and see if I can find my knitting and crochet needles as I'm getting the urge to run yarn through my fingers.

Anyone else a knitter or crocheter?
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I have two spinning wheels. They belonged to two of my great grandmothers. I have no clue how to use them, no sheep.
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Rambling early morning thoughts led me back to the post about raising sheep. Seguing into quilting and other needlework applications, I wondered if anyone here grows plants specifically for dying, either for Easter eggs or for fabric dying.

I've always wanted to spin my own yard, but raising sheep is probably beyond me at this stage of my life. Plus, it would drive the code enforcement officers crazy.

Does anyone have a spinning wheel? Sheer your sheep, card the wool, spin it, and then dye it?
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Yeah but CountryMOUSE,
What about the mouse if we catch it?
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Bunnies, deer, doesn't matter - they're both delicious braised, perhaps with a red wine reduction and some steamed seasonal veg. That'll learn 'em.
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Bunnies eat trilliums? Are you sure your deer hasn't been back for a visit?

I found 4 large planters at the habitat for humanity re-store today for only $1 each, they are a little worse for wear but will be perfect for my tomatoes and will look a lot nicer the 5 gallon pails I was going to use.
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My lovely burgundy Trilliums, with 15 sweet blooms, suddenly disappeared. I suspect the rabbits.
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My gardening plan for today:
"They" are outside, I am inside.
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"MODIFIED mousetraps", that is a fantastic job for my dH! I am impressed.
He has already put a "NO" on using a mousetrap, saying wisely, "What would we do with an animal caught in the trap?", meaning dead or alive.

So modifying the trap just to scare them away might work. He can spend hours trying to do this. yay.
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Squirrels and birds into everything. Rabbits a bit more shy. They think everything is planted just for them. I do plant extra and deferents such as nasturtiums and marigolds. Lots of plots of chives. Bird netting works wonders. It’s hard to handle. Luckily I bought the smallest size and it is plenty. Cut into four sections and covered seedlings and pots for a month. Also chicken wire shaped into domes and cages. Took the coverings away and so far so good. Think it trained them to stay away or get tangled up. Now the moles are another whole issue. 
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My blue spruce is coming out in new growth and there is hardly a caterpillar in sight yay! I'll keep watching for a new batch though.

My snowball bush is looking pretty good too, my solution to the saw flies has been to pinch off all the tender tips where they congregate and the bush has been sending out lots of new growth to compensate. Hm, this might work!

@#$%#! squirrels have dug up my window boxes every day since I planted them (not to mention my ornamental corn and pumpkin plants they destroyed the other day). I'm thinking of getting some mouse traps and modifying them so they can't snap fully closed, then placing them where the little buggers shouldn't go.... hopefully it would scare the c**p out of them.

Oh, and the birds are now laughing at the attempts I've made to discourage them from neighbour's feeder. Oh well, it bought me a couple of days anyway🙄
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Castor beans to rid off gophers. I need to plant some. Growing kale in a pot so far so good. Guess I should transplant to garden. Someone told me homegrown kale (as most everything) much better than store bought. But I’m always thankful for everything we can purchase at the store. 
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Hilled the potatoes today. Lots of tomato babies on the vines, peppers too. Harvested most of the broccoli, and will harvest the rest tomorrow. Going to make some kale chips, the kale is doing well. Set out some castor beans, supposed to detour gophers. And the Armenian cucumbers are doing well cannot wait for them.
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I’ve never had trouble with anything other than a few rabbits. They always ruin a few heads. I cut a few heads and use early on. Then use to can sauerkraut. Leave a few heads a little late. I’ve never had any go to waste. The only real pest I have in my garden is black bears getting in corn. I’m going to plant a bunch across the road to lure them away.
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