Wednesday Wanderings. #8

Good afternoon everyone! I am finally back with another Wednesday post, it really has been a while. I seem to be suffering from writer’s block, or something. It is another cloudy day here, although the clouds are getting brighter than they were this morning, so perhaps we will get to see some sunshine later. Well, there are not many of our summer birds around anymore.

We still have some young ring-billed gulls, a few robins and geese. There are likely some sparrows too, visiting some bird feeders around town. But no one in this neighborhood feeds the birds. Too bad really. I do see blue jays, chickadees, downy woodpeckers, hairy woodpeckers, pine siskins and evening grosbeaks. I don’t see them very often, but I have seen them around over the past 5 weeks. So, if a person had a bird feeder, it would be possible to attract these birds. Oh well.

Peperomia, which is now gone.

Speaking of plants. I took some photos earlier and showed them to all of you, things were looking so good, like a mini tropical jungle. It looked so nice. I like having plants around, even if they don’t bloom. It looks nice. It’s calming. It helps to reduce stress. And it looks nice. It did look nice. Something changed. It doesn’t look nice anymore. It looks more like someone came along and cut down my mini jungle and now it looks like a barren mini jungle. Without the jungle look.

All because of some tiny, nearly microscopic, insect. They munched their way through my mini jungle with devastating effect. I have so far lost 10 plants, my biggest plants. I have 5 more quarantined, though 3 of them will likely make it to the trash today. The other two seem to be bug free at the moment. The insects are called thrips. They are basically impossible to eradicate without using some highly toxic spray. Which I won’t do inside the apartment.

Hoya Australis, which I’m trying to save.

What I should have done right at the beginning when I first noticed these insects is toss the infected plants. Otherwise they just infect the other plants with these thrips. I never even heard of thrips being on indoor plants before, and I have been growing indoor plants for, um, well, a long time. I have never had these insects on my plants before now. Apparently it is a rare thing to have them on indoor plants.

What it used to look like.

I have 4 different species of Hoya plants and I’m trying to save 3 of them, the fourth one has no hope. However, I did take some cuttings from three of the Hoya plants, so hopefully I can save them that way, and that would include the fourth one. I was going to start talking about my different plants this month. I still might, though it will be a bit different.

Speaking of mail. Well, the postal service is working again, sort of. The postal workers were on strike again, second time in a year, but it only lasted 2 weeks this time. They are still striking though, but it’s rotating strikes now, which means that mail is moving, just a lot slower than normal.

Plant on the right is gone, plus the African violet that is in bloom. The others are fine.

For those of you who are looking for a letter from me, I will try to get one out to you very soon. Before they go on a full strike again. Sigh. Oh well. I hope you all have a great day and God bless!

Steve and Muffin. ©2025 Steve McLeod.