Tuesday 26 October 2010

Plagued

Now that the mice have stopped running around the house so much we've got a plague of another sort, oh but quite a nice one. Ladybirds or ladybugs, whichever you call them and we have plenty. They'vre taking advantage of the autumn sunlight and basking on the house walls during the day, but a certain amount of them have found their way inside and are congregating in the bathroom of all places.

I don't think I've seen so many in one place at a time and there are lots of variations on the red coated, black spottted ladybugs that we all know. There were yellow with black spots, black with red spots and some just plain red with no spots at all. I wish there had so many around earlier in the year to eat the aphids that attack my garden during the warmer months. Maybe it's worth looking into the habits and habitats of ladybugs and seeing if I can encourage them to come to the garden earlier.


Now I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried to take photos of the ladybugs, because I did, but the light, my camera skills and the fact that they were moving rather fast didn't produce anything good enough to be shown publicly. But hubby managed to take some rather nice pics of this spider I spotted next to our front door.


Apologies to anyone arachnaphobic (spelling???) but we thought it was pretty amazing and rather large too. That's a Bulgarian 1 stotinki coin next to it (slightly smaller than a british penny) for comparison.

And lastly for Jak and anyone else who was wondering what baba socks are, here is a pic of my prized posessions, loved for keeping me warm throughout the winter and also because they fit inside my wellington boots too! Hand knitted, usually by older Bulgarian ladies and sold at our local market. They come in a variety of colours and are worn by both men and women.


P.s if you'd like some I'm sure I could post them to you :)

2 comments:

  1. I love the Baba socks. I wear a lovely thick pair of hiking socks AND a pair of my Hubbys' inside my wellies, nothing better than lovely cosy toes.

    We have a little colony of hibernating Ladybirds in the corner of our bedroom. Last Winter (our first here) I freaked out at this and hoovered them all up, I felt guilty for ages. This year they are welcome to stay as long as they keep themselves to themselves. They seem to like a little walkabout every now and then!

    I must be turning into a country girl at last!!

    Sue xx

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  2. Thanks for showing us your baba socks, they look perfect for wellies. I'm going to see if I can track down a pattern on the internet.
    Jak x

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