Yes, lady bugs will eat aphids...And they are civilized enough to pick up and move to where you need them...

BTW, we ordered a few Praying Mantis cocoons when we moved here and now have thousands of them working for us...

And like SRS, we have toads... We also have frogs down in our pond... One of our cats likes to hunt them, drag them home and leave them on our patio... But the cat doesn't hurt them so I've been the frog cabbie lately transportin' back to the pond...

SRS,

Hope the bosses kid and spouse had a better 4th than we did... I was 45 minutes into my 1 hour set when it started to rain... Forunately for me and the band we were under a big tent which was over the stage but the 300 or so folks in the audience got wet and over half left after we finished... Glad we weren't the last band 'cause they played to an empty park 'cause the "occasional showers" showered all night... Oh well, the garden's all got a good soaking with about 2 inches of rain over the last 16 or so hours...

B