Sunday, July 05, 2009


Alas, the white wall in my kitchen and I have called a truce. I'm actually liking it. And remember Laura's idea about an all-white kitchen with the orange counter tops? Wonder of wonders, I watched a movie last night, Far From Home: The Adventures of Yellow Dog, which had exactly that. Well, the counter tops were more of a red-orange, but still... What a coincidence. And I did love that kitchen, but then, mine doesn't have all the lovely glass-fronted cabinets up on the walls and the center island and all that floor space and cool lighting and --


Anyway. The Japanese beetles have invaded again. Last year they chewed-up our grapevines and our rosebush. But unlike last year (and its overwhelming-ness), this year I'm not too busy to kill those guys. I read online that if you can get them into a bucket of soapy water, they'll die, so I found a short white plastic stick-thing, got my bucket of soapy water and walked through our orchard, garden and grapevines knocking the shiny copper guys into kingdom come.


The woman online said to do this everyday. E-v-e-r-y-d-a-y. So now you'll know where to find me in-between the painting and gardening and mowing and pulling weeds and redecorating and --


Such is farm life.


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I could also buy Japanese Beetle traps, but they sound like more trouble than they're worth. At least for today.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do not buy beetle traps. Years ago I was lured into that trap myself. I had every beetle in the village lunching on my roses before they got to the trap. It actually drew them here thick enough that they bomabarded us, especially from our plum tree which they ate into Swiss cheese. I researched it and found it was absoutely true...no more traps, no more expense. The soapy water bucket is the answer.

Wilma

Anonymous said...

We get these guys high up in our trees and they pick those poor things to pieces. I don't know that you want to go the chemical route, but we bought a big thing of spray at Lowes designed for these guys and a few applications (a week or so apart) took care of them.