Invasive Japanese beetles appeared in July, first devouring another non-native, the Virginia creeper, then the roses and hollyhocks. They burrow into opening buds, eat their way back out, don’t like morning glories but eat their heart-shaped leaves. By August, no rose was left undecimated and leaves were reduced to skeletal lace patterns. “Decadent creatures,” Phil said, watching how they doubled up on leaf and petal, “they eat and
Japanese beetles in the roses
fornicate at the same time.” Their singular mission is propagation. My traps filled rapidly, and I patrolled with a jar of soapy water morning and evening besides, must have killed hundreds. Harmless to humans, they’re easy to dispatch. Tap the shriveled rose they occupy and they drop into the dishwater doom held beneath them. They are attractive: green and copper metallic backs, dots along their sides. Kathleen Cain says it’s not their fault they’re invasive. No. That’s on us, like so much else going awry. September at last. This morning I found only four, might enjoy a few unsullied blooms before the first freeze.
Well-eaten morning glory leaf
Your writing prompt, should you choose to accept it: Grasshoppers. Kudzu. Mongols. Romans. The Brits, the Spanish. Who has not invaded Afghanistan? Californians moving to Colorado. Invasion of privacy, of rights. Worry invades the mind. Illness invades the body. Write about invasion, one you love or one that chills your soul.
It must be because they attack our beautiful roses that they are so despised in spite of their beautiful appearance? I wonder if I could somehow dry them and make an art piece….? For the first time this summer they are ravenously dining on my raspberry leaves–but thank god, for some reason, they do not like the red fruit. This gives us a glimpse of their IQ.
I just got an image of these beetles arranged on lace-patterned leaves, the whole thing coated in a clear varnish of some kind, the metallic coppery-green backs glowing…
The Invasion of Sounds. Sitting in my kitchen with morning coffee, there is no hope for silence. It’s not the just the exterior summer sounds heightened through open windows–school buses, diesel chugging away from our corner stop sign, or the constant ping ping of nail guns from the apartments being built a block away. Lawnmowers and leaf blowers.
I’m talking about the little tone jingles that permeate my consciousness during the day, the ones that want me to DO something. I can actually hum some of them, not really a melody or a song, but didn’t someone “compose” it, on a computer or something? The short ditty on Geof’s cell phone, that signals an incoming robo call that he doesn’t want to answer, plays, repeatedly. Another jingle for a text. The timer on the stove is a delightful little ditty gently suggesting I go change the hose. There are, of course, the single tone orders with no attempt at subtlety or musical integrity–the refrigerator door left ajar, the frozen bagel in the microwave is done, the dryer cycle is complete. How did we ever conduct business without all this help? Gloriously in retirement I have managed to eliminate the invasion I hated most. The alarm clock which attacked me daily at 6:00 has been silenced. Perhaps I can figure out something for the rest of them. Geof says not to worry, our hearing loss is our hope for silence.
Bravo! And just this morning I was ranting about my inability to work in my study because of the neighbor listening to a podcast while she worked in the yard, and the lawn guys on the other side, and a toddler wailing in a backyard across the alley and here comes a siren and tell Geof I can’t wait for hearing loss.
I just read an article about this the other day. Can’t find it. About how every device has to emit little ditties upon activation. I found it rather cute on our new dishwasher, although perplexing (why?). Now I have a rental car. Stick the key in, and it sings a song for me. Why? I know I activated the system that allows me to drive. Why tell me what I already know?
Oh, yes! You describe so well the inanity of my dryer singing me a song to announce its success doing its job. And the microwave dings: why, why, why?
Invaders? Yeah, Japanese beetles. Funny, most of them practice the defensive drop and roll maneuver, unaware of the soapy death soup beneath them, but every so often a smart one flies away.
Then there’s the guy who can’t stop talking about invasion: Trump. He invades my mind because my wife watches CNN and he’s always yelling about something. I use industrial-strength earplugs to keep him from burrowing into my brain while I read.
I have taken to reading the news when possible, rather than listening to it. Last night T started talking about keeping “bad people” from the stricken Bahamas from coming here and I couldn’t listen, had to leave the room.
No, I can’t listen to it, either. Definitely can’t watch it. Reading is quicker and less painful. I’ve even minimized my NPR consumption if I have a better podcast available.
Tiny, brown burrs needle into my toddler sons’ white cotton socks, scratching the soft roundness of their calves, the tender skin of their ankles. We sit in the unroofed shell of our mountain cabin, and I pull out each snagging seed head, then begin to hunt its source on our next walk. “Burr plants,” the boys call them, boys now in their twenties who buy their own socks, who battle their own invaders. Knapweed is my sworn mortal enemy, an import whose ancestor seeds stowed away in the sidewalls of tractors, noxious weeds that found refuge in the disturbed earth of this country meadow we decided to call ours, to plunk a house onto. We clear knapweed all season now, from the side of the road, from the edge of pristine mountain bike trails. Huge trash bags loaded with stinking stalks and cutting seedpods. Plastic vessels loaded with the illusion that we can eradicate the weed and the helplessness it inspires. Slowly, I understand what the Buddhist spoke—we love our enemies, not by commandment, but by the activity of by holding them so close in our thoughts.
With a frisson-inducing epiphany at the end! Indeed, those beetles controlled my mind all summer. Bravo!