I Hate Japanese Beetles!

Garden Pest

Japanese Beetle © 2008

The Japanese beetle has invaded my gardens and yard. They have been voracious this summer and really inflicted a great amount of damage. The beetles eat the surfaces of the leaves, but avoid the vein which remains intact, and therefore the foliage looks lacy. However, it is not a pretty sight to any gardener.

Lacy Leaf Damage

Lacy Leaf Damage on Filbert Tree © 2008

The beetle was first discovered in the United States in 1916, and it is thought it was accidentally introduced in New Jersey in imported Japanese iris. The beetles are controlled in Japan by natural predators, but are unchecked in the US. They are found in every state east of the Mississippi River, except for Florida.

The best defense in my smallish garden is removal by hand – yuk! There are traps using pheromones, but some studies show the traps can actually attract more beetles than they catch. I’m not one to use much in the way of chemical control if possible, but I”ve been using Bonide from Garden Naturals in the worst areas and that seems to have helped.

Anyone else fighting these pests successfully with other means?

Stalking the Clouds

Next to a Cornfield

Next to a Cornfield © 2008

Not all of my hiking has me wandering through prairie land. Today’s hike started in prairie and ended up with me coming face to face with an endless expanse of cornfield. This Midwestern corn is tall stuff when you get up close. And surprisingly noisy. Lots of insects buzzing and crickets cricketing and birds swooshing. Critters scooting between the rows of corn. It’s rather a mini eco-system in it’s own way.

The Enlightened Man

Carving on Carousel at Ellas Deli in Madison, Wisconsin

Carving on Carousel © 2008

He looks rather like a minor god of the carousel, but I can’t find any information about this guy.

The carving, lit to full effect, graces the Parker Carousel at Ella’s Deli on the east side of Madison. It is one of fewer than 75 operational, original carousels in the country. The carousel was built in 1927 in Leavenworth, Kansas, and operated in a park in North Tonawonda, New York for 20 years. When the park closed the carousel was dismantled and stored for years, and when brought to Madison, it required intensive restoration.

The carousel became operational in 1976 and has been a favorite of kids and adults alike for more than 30 years. I’ve taken quite a few spins of the ride myself, entertainment for my three kids. Okay, I admit it. Entertainment for me too. I love the slow spin, and the up and down horses (and camel) and keeping my eyes closed, listening to the pipe organ music.

You can almost imagine a scene out of the 1930s.

Leaping Camel

Leaping Camel on Carousel at Ellas Deli

Leaping Camel on Carousel © 2008

This seemed like an appropriate photo for a Friday evening, the beginning of the week-end after a long week. We might do well to celebrate – maybe take a giant leap for joy like this great carousel camel.

What?  Carousel camel?

Down on My Knees

Antique Flowers Shot While Kneeling in Grass in White Jeans

Antique Tin Flowers Photographed While Kneeling in Grass in White Jeans © 2008

Today – it is only 9:43 am – and already I have had one of those life lesson days. You’d think I wouldn’t have to expose my mind to such philosophical points of view so early, but lessons are not planned. They simply happen. Here’s today’s lesson:

Don’t Skip the Basics

How obvious! Yes? No!

I’m frazzled these days – change of seasons, change of life, changes in life. Ordinary and not-so-ordinary living kinds of things. My mind was full this morning chewing on all those nasty bits and I was giving it unlimited chomping privileges.

But there were things to do, whether or not I wanted to do them, and I had baskets of dirty clothes and a rainy day and a morning without a deadline or appointment. Good time for tackling the ever-erupting laundry hamper. Mind half on my task, I sorted the clothes in the appropriate piles and carried the first load down to the washing machine.

Whites were first. I hate white clothes – all that underwear and a dozen-plus tee-shirts to be sorted by sizes and folded. White socks without their mates.  A few cotton shirts that actually need ironing. (Why, I ask myself over and over, do I wear these shirts? Because they feel so clean and crisp when I need that clean, crisp feeling, I answer). And a pair of white jeans.

I pulled out the spot remover and tackled hard-to-erase grass stains from the knees of the jeans, stains that were ground in well. Ground in while I was kneeling in a thick, wet lawn to take a close up photo of an antique tin flower that had caught my eye. The stain came out, but it took a while. A rather long while.

After all the clothes were in the machine, I realized I hadn’t checked pockets. Water was spraying all over, the suds were bubbling, and I simply didn’t feel like putting my hands in the soapy mess.

“Nah,” I convinced myself, way too easily. “Nothing in those pockets. Just jeans.” And so I clunked the lid down and went off to tackle the challenges in my world. I planned on counteracting all those garbage thoughts with some wholesome journal writing.

I was really into my words when the washer stopped, and feeling more than a little irrationally irritable at the machine, I stalked over to it and dumped the clothes from the washer into the dryer. I was back in my favorite writing nook when a thought crept out of my brain for examination. “Do you want to check those pockets now?” it whispered.

“NO,” I retorted. It’s a little sad when you find yourself screaming – and you are sitting all alone in a quiet house.

So of course, you know what happened, don’t you?

There was a cheap black ink pen in my pocket. It made it through the wash cycle, but the plastic ink tube erupted in that warm dryer and leaked ink into my tumbling clothes. And then the ink tumbled and tumbled through those white clothes as they tumbled and tumbled through the dryer.

I retrieved my clothes when the buzzer sounded.

Jackson Pollock would have been proud.

So the few seconds it would have taken me to do the basics have turned into hours now needed to clean the inside of the dryer, salvage what I can of a mound of black spattered white clothing, and decide how to replace the necessaries that need replacing.

I just put my second load into the washing machine. And I paid more attention and did the complete job this time. Including pockets. That mindfulness thing. Be aware. Pay attention.

Oh, yeah! Mindfulness. I’m thinking it even applies to doing laundry.