1700 Growing Degree Days (B42)

The first few Japanese Beetles sighted.  This one is on a weed called amaranth (Amaranthus retroflexus).

Japanese Beetles are social insects.  They will come in great numbers to the proper pheromones and floral scents.  Gardeners cuss them when hundreds of them congregate and they strip every leaf off of a prized grapevine or rose or raspberry bush.

Their attraction to pheromones and floral scents are used to trap them but I think they can be used for a higher purpose.

Picture in your head a lake with a few, lunker bass.  Also picture in your head grassy meadows, perhaps golf courses or pastures or parks downwind of that lake.  Picture in your head docks for boats.

Now, picture in your head one dock that has several Japanese Beetle traps, sans collection bags, tack to its side.  Japanese Beetles emerging from the sod would follow the siren song of the pheromones to the dock.  They would smack into the yellow "target" and tumble into the water....by the hundreds, perhaps thousands. And what do you suppose would lie in wait for those protein and fat laden morsels (piscina Snickers Bars, if you will).  I propose that it would not be vegetarians.

The second use would be to control invasive alien plants like Multiflora Rose.  As noted earlier, Japanese Beetles like roses...so why not put the lures, again without the collection bags, in Multiflora Rose specimens?

Pictures from the garden

One of my impact sprinklers stopped working.  Can you see the problem?

A wasp or solitary bee laid an egg in the orifice.

This is what I dug out.  I felt bad.  Those wasps and bees tend to eat "bad" insects and are good pollinators.  But I needed my sprinkler back.

Woodchucks

The war continues.  I caught this one by the nose.

Beans

Cucumber trellis on the extreme left.  A double-row of small red beans on the near left.  A double-row of Great Northern beans on the near right.  A trellis for the purple pole beans in the right.

Amaranthus retroflexusAma

Amaranthus retroflexus

Mrs ERJ
Our trash container lost the hinge-pin on one side.

Mrs ERJ figured out a way to get it through one more week.

I would like to say that I am starting to rub off on her but it is just as likely to be the other way around.  Mrs ERJ is a very resourceful woman.