Sidewalk Greenspace on New York's Upper West Side
The spotted lanternfly is back again, and in larger numbers than last year — I’ve seen five in the last 36 hours, and only managed to kill two of them.
Please be on the lookout and do your best to kill them on sight, before they damage our trees and garden plants.
The burdock flowers also draw a crowd of bees; these ones are European honey bees.
Another reason I like burdock is that it supports a lot of insects. A week ago, I noticed that seemingly overnight, the undersides of the flower clusters had been swarmed by hundreds of aphids. I pulled out the hose and blasted a bunch of them off with a few quick squirts, but that only thins them out, it never gets ’em all, so I was very pleased to find a couple of ladybugs crawling around on it the next day. Although they’re cute, I know they’re fiends for aphids.
And even better, by the end of the week I was seeing ladybug larvae crawling around, clearing out the lingering aphids. A few days later, I can no longer find any aphids at all.
Last week I turned over a rock in a sidewalk treebed and this little earwig scuttled out looking for a new burrow.
I just killed a second Spotted Lantern Fly less than 24 hours after the first, so I’ve nailed its carcass to my garden gate as a warning to others.
(Well, that was my original plan, but I switched to tape because I don’t think a nail would’ve worked very well.)
