Pests and Achy Joints

I was intrigued when I came across this moth on our crocosmia Friday morning. I took some photos, loving that morning sun coming through the leaves, with the intention of identifying it later in the day. By the time I got around to looking it up, the moth was long gone -- and I realized it's the brown variety of a box-tree moth, an invasive species first reported in England in 2007 and now a serious pest of box hedges and topiaries.

Oops. Guess I shouldn't have let it get away!

We don't have any box, so what it was doing in our garden is anyone's guess. I photographed one last year, too -- the white variety.

Here's another garden pest -- aphids. The ones on our lupines are huge. Kind of a horror show, right? I knock them off every now and then, but in this case the flower spike is quite old and on its way out, so I've been lax.

We also have caterpillars of some type rolled up in the leaves of our fig tree. Sigh...

We don't spray pesticide, so these sorts of critters are bound to turn up, I suppose.  

I also discovered yesterday that one of our roses has a pretty severe-looking case of rust, which is a fungal disease. I took off a lot of the diseased and dying leaves but I may have to spray fungicide to get that under control. I hate to do it, because I want mushrooms and other naturally-occurring fungus in the ground, but now that the landlord has told me these rose bushes are decades old I feel a sense of responsibility to keep them healthy.

On a happier note, here's a short series of videos sent to me by our dog-walker, Francisco, showing Olga out with her pals. It's fun to see her interacting with him and with the other dogs, which of course I never get to see in real life.

I took her to the vet yesterday for her routine shots, and I mentioned to the vet that she sometimes seems stiff and reluctant to walk. The vet checked her out and said Olga has some arthritis in several joints. So we're going to try to give her low doses of anti-inflammatory medication to see if that improves how she feels. (She's already on glucosamine, which seemed to help a lot initially, but its benefits have faded somewhat in the last week or two.)

Though seeing patients during the pandemic, our vet asks the humans to stay outside while the pet is taken in for examination. So I found myself hanging around the front of the building in the rain while Olga got looked over. Fortunately I had an umbrella!