Barb Wallace’s Big, Bad, Buggy Summer
No, that’s not a cutesy book reference. I mean, it’s literally been the summer of bugs at my house. It started this spring when we noticed green inchworms hanging from all our trees. The worms were Winter Moth Larvae, and they’d invested all the deciduous trees in our yard. Remember the book, The Hungry Caterpillar where he eats and eats and eats until he discovers the nice green leaf? I’m pretty sure Eric Carle based his character on the Winter Moth larvae because those suckers chowed our trees. Had we not sprayed with (organic) fruit-tree spray, the trees would have lost their leaves completely. Instead, the foliage is merely thinning, much like a middle-aged man’s hair.
Source: University of Delaware
Interestingly, the inchworms weren’t the biggest eaters in the yard. That particular title goes to the European Sawmill Fly larvae. The good news is these hungry little buggers eat only the old growth off of evergreens. The bad news is if you have mature shrubs, you have a lot of old growth.
Spring yard results: Bugs 2; Wallace plants 0
Next up, was this pretty guy:
Copyright Dan Osipov 2009
Upon first look, we feared he was something called The Asian Longhorn Beetle or as New England residents call it, Bug of Certain Tree Death. This bug is so insidious, the state actually requires you to hire specific licensed contractors to remove invested trees. You can understand why waking up to find a handful of them on our backyard deck unnerved us. Fortunately, a quick call to the state revealed they were the harmless – although no less creepy-looking White Spotted Sawyer Beetle..
Phew!
At this point, I should point out that none of the bugs we discovered were impossible to deal with. What threw us for a loop was the fact that after twenty years of nothing, all these bugs decided to appear at once.
After the Sawyer Beetle incident, my husband and I hoped the weird bug days were behind us as we focused on other suburb hassles like fisher cats, raccoon and teenage drivers. But then came the cicadas.
In truth, our cicada invasion wasn’t all that bad. Yes, they are big and eat leaves, yes the buzzing noise can be loud, but New England didn’t get nearly the plague-like amounts that were predicted for other parts of the States. We could live with our cicadas.
Shortly after the buzzing noises began, however, we started noticing small mounds of dirt in our backyard. My husband and I thought we had moles until last Saturday when he was doing yard work and one of these crossed his path:
Copyright Purdue University
It’s called a Cicada Killer Wasp, although we prefer the name Giant Wasp of Death (Notice we had an Insect/Death theme.) Imagine our relief to learn they aren’t aggressive, stinging victims only when stepped on.
Needless to say, we don’t walk around the yard barefoot anymore.
So that’s my summer of the bug. I could go on. (Seriously, I could. As I type this there’s a woodpecker looking very interested in the wood trim on my sun porch.) But I’ll save you further gory details.
Instead, I’ll pass the keyboard to you all. Four-legged, two-legged, fur-bearing or winged – let’s hear your summer creature stories!
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A reluctant knight in shining armor; a down-on-her-luck waitress
Photojournalist Hunter Smith likes to keep the world on the other side of the camera lens. But when he sees Abby Gray in trouble, he can’t help stepping up to the rescue.
Love betrayed Abby Gray in the worst possible way. Working as Hunter’s assistant might be exactly what she needs to put the scars of the past behind her. When the sparks begin to fly, will these two people, who’ve sworn to keep the world at arm’s length, find the courage to accept the love that’s right under their noses?
The Courage to Say Yes is an August release from Harlequin Romance. The book is available online through Harlequin.com, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. To learn more about her Barb and her books, you can sign up for her newsletter at www.barbarawallace.com
