Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Invasion

Brian loves trees. Particularly fruit trees.

He is constantly scouting for discounted trees at the end of the season. We have pecan, peach, pear, cherry and apple trees in our yard right now. (Oops, I've just been informed by Cainan that the cherry tree died.....apparently without my notice.)

I like trees and all, but to tell the truth I don't pay much attention to them. (Obviously.) They are still really young and they don't produce edible fruit yet, so I don't find them too exciting.

Earlier this summer though that all changed. Our peach tree actually had some beautiful peaches on it. They were about the size of a tennis ball and there were at least 8 of them on the tree. We were so excited to have fresh peaches.

We patiently waited for them to get ripe, checking the fruit everyday. One day Brian asked me to feel the peaches to see if they were ready to be picked. I squeezed and poked and sniffed and determined that they needed another couple of days.

The next morning we went outside and found this:





We lost EVERY SINGLE peach to the Japanese Beetles. They completely devoured the entire tree in just one day, even though we hadn't seen a single beetle on the tree all year, and we had sprayed the tree twice with insecticide.

And then we cried.

3 comments:

Chrissy said...

Ew, ew, ew! I just threw up a little....I hate things that swarm!

(and I'm sorry about your peaches.)

Becky M. said...

Oh my gosh.. how sad!! Our trees have about 40 or so on them this year (totally unlike last year where we had hundreds and hundreds!) but they are just about eaten by bugs, etc.. this year too, must be a bad year for peaches.. Just wanted to stop by and say i've enjoyed your blog.. (i was in Mops in greenville until my son started preschool and i couldn't come)
Becky

Jill said...

Poor tree. You should have seen Rob's zucchini last year. Stinkbug city! Nature is so disgusting sometimes. I think you should have had a gross-out warning at the top of this post. That was really bad. I hate things that swarm, too.