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If I had a dollar for every Japanese beetle I picked off our trees and plants last summer, I’d have $6,000. Well, to be fair, that’s an estimate. I stopped counting after 237 on the first day, but the “season” went on for more than a month. So, 6,000 is a pretty fair estimate. This year there seem to be fewer, but they are still plentiful. Japanese beetles are an invasive species that originally came from… you guessed it… Japan, where they are kept at bey by natural predators which the USA doesn’t have. They are known to eat 300 different plant species, but in our yard they prefer our fruit trees, raspberries, grapes and – depending on their moods – green beans, potatoes, currents, and certain types of marigolds, into whose flowers they bury themselves. So, for an hour or so each day I patrol the yard and garden with my plastic convenience store soda cup half-filled with water. I either grab the little buggers or flick them into the cup. It may be futile, but I figure every one I g

Some summers it seems that the rain never stops. Planting in the mud isn’t much fun, nor is pulling weeds from the wet soil. At least that’s true with whatever kind of soil we have at our house. For the past couple of weeks, it has seemed like rain was just around the corner, but frustratingly far around that corner. We watered some – usually just enough to keep things alive until the rain comes. Despite our meager watering efforts some new plants succumbed to the heat and dryness. Today it is raining. Maybe it will rain a lot. The last time we expected rain we were told to expect multiple inches but got only one-tenth. This time the rain total will be much higher, judging by what I see out the window. In Wisconsin we are fortunate to get a good amount of rain. I feel bad for the people in Southern California, among many places around the world, where drought has become a way of life. The biggest drought I can remember here was in 1988, I think, where it didn’t rain from Mothers’