Aiming for answers: Hit or miss

Columbine's pests are easy to see when they're on the flower, but they know better than to spend time there. Look for them on the leaves, where their color blends perfectly.

No sure bets in dealing with living things!

Yet every situation we face helps us learn more possibilities -- especially when we share with each other what we've observed.

So we're always glad to hear

How your experience tracks with ours, and
'What happened next.'

Choose from this collection of Hits and Misses we've

recorded, learned from and laughed at.

Right, columbine (Aquilegia species) can sometimes be defoliated by the leaf-green columbine sawfly. There is also a leaf-green caterpillar that may dine on them, although almost always less ferociously. That caterpillar is the larva of a tiny blue jewel of the insect world, the columbine skipper. If not for a helpful reader's "Ahem, you missed one!" many years ago when we were listing what to do about columbine troubles, we would not have learned to look at the prolegs to distinguish between a sawfly and a butterfly larva.