AHHHH!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

It starts! The battle has begun! Shots have been fired and now it's war!!!! AAHHHH!

Mark the calendar. June 25th, 2009. The day I spotted the first japanese beetle.

These little buggers are ridiculous. Every year it seems like they get worse. I just remember them covering the roses at the nursery, crawling into every orifice of their delicate flowers, making my grapevines in their little pots look like green swiss cheese, and buzzing out if you brushed the red beech as you walked by.

In Bowling Green in the summer time, I remember their hot July emergence and the graveyard of beetle corpses on the sidewalk under the house on the corner of court street that sprayed religiously to keep the pests away.
Even before that, when i was young, picking raspberries and sometimes accidentally pinching a beetle instead of a berry and squealing with shock. I liked the iridescent glow of these little bugs, much like my favorite dragon fly that looked like an oil slick. I didn't know what they were until my great aunts informed me that these were pests that had no place in this world and i should kill them whenever I got the chance. Of course, with raspy voices from chain smoking unfiltered cigarettes for 50+ years, their warnings were scarier then the little bugs and it really didn't sink in as far as the magnitude of the beetle problem until much later.

Which brings us to today as I drove around cutting the grass and weeds from around the trunks of the vines in the back vineyard with a keen eye on the vines and shaking a fist and yelling at the little beetles like an old man keeping kids off his lawn. After the anger subsided, I began saying my farewells to the lady bugs and friendly spiders, knowing that the insecticide sprays are soon to follow.

Anyway, here are some pictures of a short little jaunt around the rest of the vineyard to see where all the types are at... some are a bit farther along than others. We'll see how they grow.




I think it is awful now looking over these pictures and I am wondering why I remembered my camera when the grass and weeds were so out of control. But then again, I took so much care taking pictures because it is so difficult to work when the grass and weeds are high so I guess it is a double edged sword.



Anyway, it is really fun to see the "buckshot" berries forming more and more by the day. It seems like the whole summer is flying by as the grape clusters start to actually look like something we might harvest. It feels like just a couple weeks ago my toes were numb in the cold Feb. mornings... but now it's hitting 90 degrees and I am hiding in the shade of the vines for a little reprieve from the sun. Already I am kinda looking forward to football season and Thanksgiving turkey, but maybe it is just because I would like a reason to sit around and drink beers on a Sunday and my turkeys are really getting on my nerves.

I guess I should just enjoy the summer while it's here... horseflies, beetles, turkeys, and all.

~j