Friday, April 13, 2012

The Worms Crawl In...

Yes. It's gross. You are about to see gross.

So...in Wyoming...the wind blows. I know it is a unique experience given to us by Mother Nature. Oy. Please turn off the fans!

Anyhoozle, I have a wonderful client who has a beautiful home and yard. However, some of the aspen trees have been plagued by borers. This occurred mostly because of drought years weakening the trees and left them susceptible to insect invasion.

We had winds March 20th or so that clocked at 86 miles an hour at Alcova Lake. Hence...Casper Mountain has to be worse. This cllient lives below Casper Mountain. One aspen tree fell over and barely missed the house. The other, larger one, cracked. Luckily it did not fall because it would have fallen into the house.




As you can see, the aspens are medium sized and are very sick from the invasion at this time. One of the trees had broken in half and fallen. The other needed to be taken down. Glen, the chainsaw master, was on it like stink on skunk. I hung from a rope to bring the gravity away from the house when the tree fell. What a ride!

 
Yesterday...we cleaned it up. Let me tell you. Gross. I can't say that enough. Sap everywhere from the tree trying to repair and push the nasty larvae out. Larvae, bugs, nasty creatures. I was jumping up and down. I still have the creeps.

Lori and I had treated these trees with bug treatment for about 3 years with top quality tree treatment. The borers were not affected and the tree was really showing the invasion. Let's take you to the BUG ZONE. Prepare to get the heebie jeebies. They are very oogly and gross. Yuck. I'm getting the creeps just writing about this.




                                              The tree was really dying from the inside out.

Death to the nasty larvae. I smashed it like 100 times because it needed to be dead dead. Take that! I think he was screaming..."me eyes, me eyes...me belly...me head! I want my mommy!" Then...I'm pretty sure he didn't scream any more.

On a positive note, last season, Lori and I planted Midnight helleborus. Helleborus are called the Christmas Rose and they are one of my favorites. I love the meaty flowers in cream/green and now the new varieties are also fun. The Midnight variety does not have the meaty flowers like the original, but the color was spectacular.



Behold...the color!

Now..the originals (below) speak to me..."I AM FLOWER! I HAVE MEAT!"





The Midnight version (dark magenta above) are a softer, delicate, smaller variety and speak..."I am a delicate rose. I am a vegetarian."

Ok. So that was a strange comparison. Ah, well. Gardeners talk in the garden. To ourselves. To the plants...however, especially to God!


Happy Gardening! I hope the bugs stay away from your plants and trees and reside at the ugly homes...and then may the birds eat them! BWAHAHHHAA!





3 comments:

  1. Gross. They are like tree boogers. That move.

    Glad you ended with pictures of flowers as an eye wash.

    Bill

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  2. And I thought the bag worms on our Italian Cypress were awful! At least they were usually in the "bag". Gross!

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  3. We have had a bad ash borer problem here in Michigan. Fingers crossed it starts getting better.

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