Dewdrops on Roses and a Bouquet of Beetles

It has been five weeks since I saw the first Japanese Beetle of the season.  I rely on my system of strategically placed traps in the yard and morning and/or evening trips to the garden with my Bucket of Death (soapy water) to drown any beetles that I find on the roses.  I would like to say that the beetle population has peaked, but I'm not sure that that's true yet.

"Aunt Louisa" from the Leonie Bell Noisette collection at Tufton Farm.

'Tiara'

Fortunately, the high beetle concentrations are only in isolated areas of the garden.  Some roses are eaten practically to nothing on the new growth, and on any flowers that I have neglected to remove ahead of time.  Most plants have a few beetles, and some have none at all.  I am thankful for small blessings like this.

'Pat Austin'

'White Cap'

This morning, I took my camera with me on my beetle hunt, to capture the sparkling dewdrops on the roses.  Beetle hunting is a nasty job, so I try to distract myself by concentrating on the beautiful things around me ... and by taking sadistic satisfaction in how many beetles end up in the bucket and how few escape.  Japanese Beetles have no major predators in the US, which is why they are such a plague.  I wish with all my heart that some type of bird or bug would learn to look upon scenes like this as an opportunity for an easy and tasty meal.

Rest assured ... every single one of these beetles ended up in the bucket after I took this photo.

Let's not dwell on the nastiness of Japanese Beetles ... let's look at another pretty rose to take our minds off of it.

"Unrootable Red China" which, despite its study name, is quite easy to root.

Five weeks of Beetle Season down, probably three or so more weeks to go.  I can't wait till it's over.

A Surprise Package for Winnie

There was a package in the mailbox yesterday addressed to 'Winnie Puppy'.  Someone I have never met or heard from before found my pattern for knitting a tiny dog sweater and used it to make a sweater for a dog that she was in the process of adopting.  That adoption fell through, and the dog they ended up adopting was too large for the sweater, so she sent it to Winnie!

It is beautiful!  I am completely overwhelmed by the thought of such kindness.

The sweater fits Winnie perfectly!  

The sender's name is Becky and she has a blog named "Molly & Lucy".  Molly and Lucy are her new dogs, tiny seniors.  Becky's blog posts tell the story of how she adopted Lucy and Molly together last month from the Richmond Animal League, and how they are settling in and adapting to their new home and family.  The blog also has a page titled 'Consider an Older Dog' ... the advantages of adopting adult and/or senior dogs are many, and the rewards are beyond what I can describe.

Lucy and Molly

Thank you, Becky ... I will think of you and Molly and Lucy often ... especially when the weather gets colder and Winnie's new sweater will be put to very good use.

Ruby Turns Five

Ruby was about a year and a half old in January 2012, when she was pulled from the city shelter in Abingdon, Virginia, by a volunteer who turned her over to Blue Ridge Border Collie Rescue.  She had been picked up as a stray, so we have no knowledge of her history before her time in the shelter.

This is the first time I saw Ruby.  She was nervous.

My sister is friends with the woman who was Ruby's foster mom.  When my sister met Ruby, she knew that she had found the perfect dog for me ... and for Daniel, our greyhound at the time, who needed another dog in his life after Emma's death a few months earlier.  I thought I wanted another greyhound, but I agreed to meet this sweet little black dog.  You already know the rest of the story.

Ruby's first day in her new home!

Ruby was, and still is, friendly, gentle, and eager to please.  In her three-and-a-half years with us, she has blossomed into a dog who is practically perfect in every way.

She gets along well with the cats.

Dorothy sizes up the new family member from a distance.

Alice and Dorothy talked it over and decided that Ruby wasn't too much of a threat.

Maggie is the Queen, and Ruby respects that.

She was a great companion for Daniel.

She loves to be out in the garden ...

... and she patiently humors me every spring when I do photo sessions with her and the roses.

She is aware of everything around her, and I never have to worry because she warns me about things like knocks on the door, groundhogs, squirrels, and the UPS driver.

When we adopted Winnie last year, Ruby instantly took to her and helped her learn important things like how to behave at dinnertime, how to stare down a human in hopes of getting pizza crust, and other important dog stuff.

What I love most about Ruby is that she is a quiet, gentle, loving presence in our family ... always ready to snuggle and keep her humans company.

Please join me in wishing Ruby a very happy 5th birthday.  Since we don't know when her real birthday is, we decided that it would be July 4 ... a day when everyone is celebrating and she thinks that it's for her.

Happy birthday, Ruby ... I love you and I can't imagine this family without you!!

It's a Trap!

I changed this bag on the Japanese Beetle trap yesterday morning ... this represents the volume of beetles that were trapped in this spot in the last 24-hours.

I had trouble finding traps earlier in the season (I saw this season's first beetle on June 7).  When I did find them, I didn't put them out right away.  I had been keeping beetles pretty well under control with my morning routine of picking and drowning them in a bucket of soapy water, or so I thought.  Over the weekend, I realized that 'American Pillar' (my rose that grows up into the cedar tree) was covered with beetles and a majority of its leaves were eaten into lace.  Picking these off would be impossible, I refuse to apply any sort of insecticide in the garden, and leaving them alone wasn't an option that I was comfortable with.

On Monday, I placed this trap about 50 feet upwind of 'American Pillar' ... figuring that I could lure the beetles from the rose to the trap that way ... and it seems to have worked!  'American Pillar' has almost no beetles on it, and this is the second bag that has filled in the last three days (the first one was full to the rim before I noticed it).  

Many people will say that traps like this lure more beetles to the garden than would have found it otherwise.  Properly placed, this hasn't proven to be the case for me this year or in the past.  I figure it this way ... beetles I trap (or drown) are beetles that are removed from the breeding pool.  I may not be making a huge dent in overall beetle population, but at least I'm doing something ... and I'm not poisoning my garden in the process.


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Edited to add:  As soon as I finished this post and hit 'publish', I went down to the garage to get a replacement bag for this beetle trap, only to discover that I was out of them.  Since I had to leave home and go to town for replacement bags, I decided that I might as well take my shopping list with  me and combine trips.  Left home at about 11:30, returned just before 3:00.  By that time, the existing bag on the trap was full to the point of overflowing.

To deal with it, I had to carefully put a trash bag around the trap, shake the overflowing beetles to the bottom of the trash bag, all the while trying not to gag as I was releasing the trap's bag from the yellow fins that hold it.

A new bag is installed on this trap, and I placed a second trap nearby to catch even more of the little devils.  

Catching and disposing of so many beetles like this in such a short time is strangely, sadistically satisfying.

Finally, Some Siding on The Shack

The Fourth of July holiday provided my husband with a three-day weekend, and he wanted to use it to accomplish something.  Weather was predicted to be cloudy and cool (for July, you understand), and he suggested that we work to start reinstalling the siding on The Shack.  It has been months since we worked on this little building.   

The Shack looked like this last time I showed it to you:

One afternoon in February, when the weather was nice, we installed 2x4 trim, sealing tape, and roofing felt around the picture windows.

Over the holiday weekend, Day One was installing the corner trim on this wall.  This was more involved than it sounds, because we had to remove some of the siding and install sheathing on part of the west wall of the building in order to accurately install the corner on our target wall.

The longer piece of sheathing is temporary.

Yes, the siding was originally installed 50+ years ago with the seams lined up like this.

On the other corner, we cheated and used a strip of plywood on the adjacent east wall and some spacer blocks to place the corner trim in the correct spot.

With corner trim in place, and primed, we could FINALLY begin the actual installation of the siding.

A rare photo of me at work, tacking up the starter strip at the bottom of the wall.

Here is what the wall looked like at the end of Day One.

Corner trim in place, and one course of siding installed.

Day Two began with a whole lot of figuring and profuse amounts of math.  We wanted approximately four-and-a-half inches of exposure on the siding, and we had to calculate how to get that amount AND to reach the bottom of the window trim with a whole board.  This took a while.

We are reusing the siding that we removed from this wall in January.  It is scraped and repaired, and primed and painted.  The installation layout will be different than it was originally, because we are staggering the seams (like it's supposed to be done) and because we have large windows now, where this wall had no windows originally.  It took more time than anticipated to choose each piece of siding to minimize waste and to have as few seams as possible.

By the end of Day Two, which ended at lunchtime because we went to our daughter's house for a cookout on the 4th, we had worked out a rhythm and were beginning to see results much faster than at the beginning of the day.  Notice that our calculations worked out and the the siding spacing came out exactly as we planned.  I love it when stuff like that happens!

I am thrilled with how the repaired/repainted/reinstalled original siding looks!

We got to work bright and early on Day Three, and we accomplished a LOT ... installing all of the stack of siding that I had prepared ahead of time.  

In progress photo, with siding between the windows.

End of day, 7/5/15.

This is all that we can do for now, till I get some more siding prepared ... which I will do as time permits.

Here's a short summary, to show you how far we have come.

Photo of this wall, before we started working on it.

My husband's Photoshop rendering.

What this wall looks like right now.

What started out as a tired little building, with tons of character and a whole lot of promise, is slowly beginning to truly look like the studio that I have always hoped it could become.

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If you are new to this project, or you want to refresh your memory on how it got to this point, here are links to previous posts.

Reframing and Sheathing
Beginning to Install the Windows
Finishing the Window Installation
Preparing the Siding


If you're visiting here from Metamorphosis Monday, thanks for stopping by!!

Sunday Snapshot ... That's MY Mommy.

This is a typical scene here at our house.

My husband and I had been working outside (which is why you see that I'm wearing camouflage work pants).  I parked on the sofa to chill for a few minutes, before going upstairs to shower, and the animals seized the opportunity to grab some mommy-time.  

Winnie had been on her green down throw (that you see there all wadded up).  When Dorothy arrived, Winnie quickly hopped over to claim my lap.  Dorothy was feeling affectionate ... she rubbed on me for a few minutes, then she settled in beside me on my arm.  When Dorothy is happy like this, she stretches out and puts her toes on me.  This time, she was touching Winnie and Winnie didn't like it one bit.  

Each time Dorothy moved her toes, Winnie growled.  I use situations like this as a training opportunity ... correcting Winnie when she reacts and praising and petting her and telling her that she's a good girl when she's quiet.  It only took a few minutes for Winnie to decide that my lap was the reward in this case, and that she would have to tolerate the happy cat who wanted to touch her.  

Happy Sunday, Everyone!

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Sunday Snapshots are posts devoted to a moment in time that represents a slice of life in Hartwood, or wherever else I happen to be at the time. 

Oh, Deer.

There are advantages to spending early mornings in the garden.  It's cooler in the morning, and I can sometimes catch a glimpse of some of the wildlife that shares the property with us.  

I saw this fawn today, sniffing around a tree in our back field.  It was about the same size as Ruby.

I was down-wind from it, and being very quiet as I slipped my phone out of my pocket and snapped this photo.  The scene was quickly disrupted when I sneezed and the little fawn bolted, its white tail raised in alarm, and it dashed toward the safety of our tree line.