Coming Wave of Red Beetles Meets Defeat in First Hostile Encounter with Superior Forces!
Ether St. Vying
The 6 inches of snow and ice from last weekend is almost gone. For a few
days now, I've been inspecting the grounds. It's a lot to take in given
that it's been half a year since we've seen the soil of our land. And
there it is, moist and brown ... ready to explode with both visible and
unseen life.
Just before the snows came on November 1st, I'd laid the medium sized
branches of the failed and felled plum tree on the bare, curved bed in
the middle of the garden. It's where my favourites grow ...
intoxicatingly sweet-scented oriental lilies - StarGazers, Madonnas,
Turk's Caps, as well as the unscented, but robust, showgirl with flower
power galore, Stella D'Oro.
As I scan the details, I notice what appears to be a plump red bud on
the tip of one of the bare, dead branches. My mind boggles, and my eyes
zoom in .... and there it is .... a fully adult, fire-engine-red, Lily
Leaf Beetle directly above Stella's light green stubble. I reach over in
my thick, fleece-lined, cold-weather-mucking garden gloves and try to
squash the red menace to death. But my gloves are too thick and soft ...
so I drop it on the flagstone path where it lands on its crunchy,
chitinous back, wiggling its 6 little, black legs like mad ... and then
I smear it with the muddy sole of my right duck. Victory! I'm smugly
satisfied seeing it's body crushed, its frantic legs stilled, and its
syrupy, vital juices streaked on the stone-shaped slab of concrete. It
had already been feeding on Stella's developing foliage, yet to unfurl
... a crime punishable by death. Actually, for Lily Leaf Beetles, just
showing up is a crime punishable by death.
The strategy for eradication that I'd adopted in the fall is a good one.
Bare the ground to eradicate stragglers and deny the enemy a place to
hide. No mulch, so that those that don't dig in deep enough perish from
the cold. It needed bitter cold, and no snow cover, to succeed.
I could implement the sound strategy, but I couldn't control the forces
of nature. Every bug, good, bad and indifferent, every weed and seed,
every fungal spore survived under the thick blanket of insulating snow
that entombed the land for 6 long months. All things were snug as a bug
in a rug ... until today.
St. Ether, Patron Saint of Oriental Lilies: 1
Lily Leaf Beetle: 0
Nothing says spring like smearing the first, juicy, perpetual bug, once
so snug.
Life carries on, and on, and on ...
Ether St. Vying