"Indy, why does the floor move?" In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was snakes. When the ground moves on my street, it's usually ants. Sometimes I dig them up by accident and a shiny black slick rises to the surface. What's the going commodity price on a barrel of ants? I wonder. Occasionally there is an almost imperceptible wave across the rock garden. Something is in motion, but you have to look closely to see that it's ants on the move. I suppose they get restless by times. The other day I lifted a bucket that had been left too long in one spot. The ants have no sense of the temporary nature of a plastic bucket. The underside had an outer rim that elevated the bottom of the bucket just enough to make it the roof of a lovely ant nursery. I ruined everything. Well, not quite. I could have ruined everything, but instead of viciously stomping on their baby sisters (which look very much like toasted puffed rice cereal), I took a video of the ants hurrying them to underground safety. That's about all the attention the ants have received from us lately. If they want to distract us from the other animals in our yard, they will have to be a lot more trouble.
It's caterpillar season again. We find forest tent caterpillars ascending the trunks of green ash trees on the boulevard. Barry has banded these trees with fiberglass insulation and tanglefoot, and ventured as far as his ladder will reach to remove any visible (and accessible) clusters. But the trees are huge. Out of reach, thousand of caterpillars munch through the leaves and defecate on the ground, the sidewalk, vehicles, formerly clean laundry hung out to dry, flowers and foiliage in the front garden. I suppose the vegetable garden is getting a little more sun this spring, with most of the leaves of the big shade tree having been processed into little black granules and dropped to the ground. There is a green ash not far from here that has been completely defoliated. A few crispy rolled up leaves dangling from one twig were the only evidence that it wasn't dead. It is said that trees can recover from complete defoiliation, and we have seen some new healthy leaves emerging. But can they do it year after year?
It's not just the huge trees. The apple tree is a wreck and the pear tree is better but still mangy. The critters are also into the haskaps, strawberries, and even the new cotoneaster hedge, whose tiny leaves you would think are not even big enough to roll up into a shelter. And the dangling of the younger larval instars (as seen here on the water tank)! The air is thick with them by times. They are unavoidable. As we headed out on a bike ride (it was nice to have a few hours away from tall trees), Barry observed a mobile of caterpillars spinning and swaying, glowing in the morning sun.
We are trying to do our bit to stop the devastation, with the afore-mentioned tanglefoot plus Btk and Trounce and a knife and a fly swatter and electric bug zapper rackets and our shoes, even fingers in a pinch. Greenhaven was sold out of Btk today, but there are rumours that Country Blooms still has some. How long before it's only available at inflated black market prices?
Leafhoppers sucked the life out of our grape and Virginia creeper leaves last summer. I can't see in past blog posts that I recorded this, which is quite disappointing because I would like to know when it was they overwhelmed us and caused us to resort to using the Shop-Vac. This photo was taken mid-August and looks to be early in the battle. They made short work of the leaves at the time, but the vines were still able to produce grapes. Now we see them in June. Barry has been diligent with the soap spray, trying to nip this plague in the bud. The tricky part is getting to the underside of leaves (where the hoppers feed) of vines making their way across the greenhouse roof.
Another pest that seems to have shown up early is some form of flea beetles. These have always shown up en masse late in the summer, usually on squash leaves or bolted radishes, where they weren't going to have much effect on garden production. I don't recall seeing them in June before, and not on tomato leaves. It is likely a different kind than we have had; there do seem to be species that go for different plants. Anyway, there they were last weekend, chewing holes in the wee tomato plants. More work for the insecticidal maniac. I left straw mulch on the garden beds over winter. Is this a kindness to pests?
There has also been some clandestine eating of pole beans and bush beans, but these are one-plant-at-a-time type attacks, and they were due for some thinning. May be we should just grow onions and parsnips. They seem to be invincible. Or maybe we should give in and call these animals "livestock" instead of "pests".
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