Operation Ladybird!

If you dropped by earlier in the week you will remember this! Well today we enacted Operation Ladybird as my googling discovered that the hibernating ladybirds needed to go back outside.  The problem with them hanging out in my kitchen (apart from them dropping in to casseroles!) is that they wake up when the heating goes on and, as there is a lack of aphids in my kitchen, they die.  

Tony used his very soft pollination brush to knock them off their perch in the window corner but they wouldn't go quietly and started climbing out of their vase!  It wasn't until much later that we remembered keeping them in matchboxes as children.  It was manic for a few moments whilst Tony tried to keep them in and I tried to persuade the escapees into their des res houses.  Eventually we got them up to the allotment where many of them went ecstatic at the sight of all that organic gardening and took flight.  My blip shows Tony brushing the last two into their new home.

Later in the day several more emerged in the kitchen so they are now housed in the do-it-yourself house (great place the internet!)  in the fuschia bush in the garden so I can rehouse them quickly.  If you want to make one for yourselves - cut the end of a plastic drinks bottle, roll up cardboard and slip inside (make it shorter than the bottle so it doesn't get damp) then place it in a south facing, sheltered spot tilted slightly downwards so the rain stays out.