TERRE HAUTE —
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
I don’t have a problem with most insects at all. Sure, I’ve just about had it with the wasps that keep building their nests over and over in my hose reel box and menace us as we water our tomatoes, and I have wood bees snooping along the eaves of my cabin, which I now inspect almost daily. We faced an ant invasion in our kitchen this spring, too — a little spraying and a lot of vacuuming took care of it — and we occasionally find in the garage those huge wolf spiders that send shivers up our spines. But, for most part, we live with the bugs around our place, taking the good with the bad. We enjoy our dragonflies and butterflies and the occasional praying mantis, and I mow slowly when the clover is in bloom just so our honey bees are given a chance to get out of the way. I hear that the walking sticks we always have near our porches are pretty good at eating bad bugs, so we leave them alone, too. Like everyone else, we tolerate the gnats and the black flies and the mosquitoes.
Sawyer beetles — also called long-horned beetles — are a whole different story.Not only are they repulsive-looking little buggers, they are the main reason I am cutting down most of the Georgia red pines on my property, trees that I planted 25 years ago to serve as windbreaks and natural privacy fences. The beetles not only have the rotten habit of feeding on the young pine shoots, which causes enough damage, but also they release hitch-hiking nematodes — tiny worms — from their breathing pores that go on to chew on the already wounded tree until its needles turn brown, its bark peals off like sunburned skin, and the tree dies a slow, creeping death.
When we first moved here, the only trees that had ever really been planted on the property were a few fast-growing locusts and soft maples. Within a year or two, we had to cut down a massive, dying sycamore in our front yard, and one of the locusts blew over in a storm. I made up my mind that I was going to plant more trees as I expanded and groomed my yard, and I did just that, sticking pin oaks and tulip poplars that have grown and prospered and shaded us just about everywhere we can walk.
Since we own a large, long front lawn, and the wind blasts across it from the fields to our west, I decided to plant a windrow of pines to cut the current down a bit. I ordered trees from the state Department of Natural Resources, and when debating as to whether I should order red or white pines, was told by a naturalist there that the white pines were more common but the red pines were hardy and would be more distinctive. I took his word for it and planted 24 of them along the roadside; the sawyer beetles must have paid him under the table …
The trees grew like weeds. For a few years — since I was living on a young teacher’s salary and couldn’t shell out the money for the quarter-mile length of garden hose I needed — I walked 5-gallon buckets of water to the trees. I pulled the weeds around their trunks by hand to protect them, and kept them fed with fertilizer. Within a few years, I was mowing around their broadening bases, amazed that they were getting so large and full and green.
Then the assaults began. The trees weren’t helped when a county road crew sliced into their roots as they “bermed” the ditches along my place with a road grader. A year or two later, a speeding driver managed to run off the pavement and whack into three of them. Over the years, wind blew the tops out of a few more, and it didn’t take long before the deer began to nibble on and rut against the rest. I have accidentally smacked into them with mowers and weed trimmers, and they have been pelted with sand and salt and rocks via the snowplows, but somehow, the pines thrived. That is, until pine wilt took over, caused by the pine sawyer beetles.
I hoped that somehow the trees would make it. I trimmed them religiously, first at their bases, then at eye level, and eventually from a ladder. I sprayed and fertilized and worried, but, one by one, the trees became skeletal and brown, and in even the slightest breezes the limbs dropped messily into the yard. Long, dry Indiana summers are particularly hard on red pines, so last year’s drought had to have been a contributing factor to my trees’ rotten health.
A few Saturdays back, Zach Sampson and Torre Lynn, two former students of mine who don’t think going to work is enough work to work at, dropped by. I had told them that I wanted to take out the dead pines, and they reminded me that they were up for the job since they both dearly love their chainsaws, making a few dollars and working together. I told them that six of the trees still looked pretty good, nine were on the critical list, but would be given a last chance, and nine had to be cut and hauled off. Within five hours, the trees were felled, cut into pieces, hauled off and burned (infested wood should be torched). They even raked up the lawn before they left. As I wrote out a check, I told them that the pines remaining on life-support would probably have to go by the end of the summer, and that I’d be calling on them again.
In the days since the trees were cut, I have missed them. That may sound silly, but I can’t help but mow the yard and notice the sun beating down where there was once shade or hearing the road noise that was once muffled. I know the pines I have left will have to go, and I think that once I get their stumps out of the way, I’ll probably plant crabapples or redbuds or dogwoods — something that won’t get too big and will add color to my yard. Ironically, I have planted a number of white pines around my place, and they are tall and healthy and green. White pines rarely contract pine wilt …
Much has changed since I first planted my red pine trees. I know I don’t have the desire to haul water two buckets at a time to what will be growing out there next, and I know it was easier on my creaky back to have those two young guys doing the cutting and lifting, raking and sweating on that humid Saturday afternoon, too.
But if I happen to see another pine sawyer beetle anywhere on my property, he’s all mine …
Mike Lunsford can be reached by email at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at http://tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. His third collection of stories, “A Place Near Home,” is due to be released in the fall.
Mike Lunsford
Related Photos
-
Tribune-Star columnist Mike Lunsford
Discussion
MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
- Mike Lunsford
-
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Taking a road less traveled in this illogical life
If you can still recall reading the poetry of Robert Frost in your high school English class years ago, I imagine that you can conjure up a line or two from his “The Road Not Taken.”
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Books open our eyes to that which we will never see
I got a letter last week from a friend, Sister Margaret Quinlan, who lives amidst the beauty of the St. Mary-of-the-Woods campus. Besides the email space and the time she invests in describing the flowers and trees and birds that she shares with her roomies out there, as well as her accounts of teaching and traveling, Margaret most often writes about books. She loves them, and she knows I do, too.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Hoping to master the art of taking a nap
I got away from work as early as I could one day last week. It was a cloudy day, filled with grayness and rain, and my head felt as if I had inhaled my pillow the night before. My throat suggested I’d swallowed a wood rasp, too, and my eyes felt as though I was looking through someone else’s glasses. Yet, I had work do, this column being on the list of chores.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Windy companion finally gives him the cold shoulder
The wind came to visit us this week. We live on the knob of a hill that overlooks a Raccoon Creek valley, and it is a breezy spot year-round, but this wind was the kind that ushers in a full-blown front from Canada, perhaps just to remind us that cold weather is going to be the boss around here for a while. No matter how surprising our mild winter has been so far, this kind of wind tells us not to expect many more warm days over the next few months.
-
SIDELINES: Good for even a traditional Classic buff
Lights down, tree out, another year gone at the Classic.
-
THE OFF SEASON: The more things change, the more they keep changing
I must have had at least a dozen people ask at my son’s wedding a few weeks ago whether I cried, or “how I was handling losing him.” I think they all knew just how tight I am with my two kids, and thought I must have come completely unglued when it finally hit me that he was on his own for good, that the rules had changed nearly as much in my life when he said ,“I do,” as they did for him.
-
Lunsford signing new book at Brazil Coffee Grounds
Parke County writer Mike Lunsford will be signing his latest book, “A Place Near Home” (Shade Tree Press; $15) from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at Coffee Grounds, Bakery and Coffee Shop in Brazil.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: In the neighborhood with the ‘fantastic’ Mr. Fox
As we drove home late one night last week, my wife and I, both a bit drowsy and anxious for a warm bed and a long nap, were surprised to see a red fox as it darted across the road. He made his appearance in a flash — just a bit of nose and fur and bushy tail — as he jumped out of a ditch in front of our car and was caught in the glare of our headlights on his way to the relative safety of an apple orchard.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The lizard wore long johns, and other Halloween tales
We stocked our house with a supply of Halloween candy last week; Joanie and I stopped into the new dollar store in town and filled a grocery cart with Butterfingers and Baby Ruths and Three Musketeers bars. Every aromatic bit of it has been calling to me from the orange-and-black baskets we keep on a living room trunk ever since.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Here’s to the simple beauty of an untended garden…
I can hear a combine eating its way across a nearby cornfield as I write this on a Saturday evening. It is a sound that signals the end of one season and the beginning of anot
-
The Off Season: Listening to Mozart is a ‘purr-fect’ way to relax
Regardless of what some people may believe, classical music fans are not snobs. They come from all walks of life, fall into all income brackets, and they’re not required to understand or analyze anything to which they’re listening; they just need to enjoy themselves.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Fall’s arrival heralded in ever-present fencerows
As much as I hate summer to leave us, I am happy that fall is just around the corner. It has been a bone-dry season, one in which I’ve watched my yard bake and crack like an old pie crust. My wife and I are still spending our evenings going about the business of watering flowers, standing with a dribbling hose in our hands, optimistically hoping that our drought will be broken because we’ve tempted the weather fates to do us one better and give us a good rain.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: The value of hard work goes well beyond a paycheck
Years ago, I used to drive into Rosedale to get my workday started with a big cup of black coffee. Every morning, Monday through Friday, until the town grocery store’s business dried up and blew away, you could have found me slipping through a back door — left unlocked for the early birds — of the old Red and White, 15 minutes before it opened for official business.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Life’s little conveniences actually can be quite annoying
I am aware that much of the language I use is outdated, stodgy, old-fashioned; I apologize.
-
The Off Season: Another sad passing: One-time trendsetter can’t keep up
I wandered into the local mall bookstore the other day. My wife and I had come to town with a list of chores to do and things to buy, but whenever we venture anywhere near a place with book shelves and sales tables and racks of paperbacks, we’re attracted to the scent of ink and the sight of book covers like bees to clover .
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Overheated in Hobart and other vacation tales…
My family climbed into our van and headed to Michigan a few weeks ago, just as we do every other year or so, to stay on the great lake there, for we have come to love its cool breezes and blue water and lighthouses.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Silence is wonderful, as long as you don’t take it too far
I have visited this topic — how it is often only through inconvenience that we come to appreciate the comforts we have in life — before.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: His tolerance for insects ends with sawyer beetles
As I sloshed a can of water over a pot of red petunias a Sunday morning ago, I saw a pine sawyer beetle make its way slowly up the vinyl siding near my front door. I swatted it to the concrete, and smashed it with my shoe … with impunity, I might add.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Storm damage makes you appreciate home
My wife and I hadn’t been into town for a good while when we drove in from our place to visit her doctor and my favorite hardware store last week.
-
Paying respect in more way than one way…
It has become a habit of mine on Mother’s Day to go to Rosedale Cemetery and lay a few irises on my mom’s grave.
-
The Off Season: On the trail with Max the Mushroom Cat
The wet weather and a busy calendar have kept my wife and me from doing what we’ve really wanted to do for a while. Ever since the thermometer began to stay consistently above 40 and the grass started to green, we’ve wanted to get outside, get some sun on our arms, and get down to the wetlands to watch the geese make their landings with a flourish and a honk.
-
THE OFF SEASON: So much to do; so little time…
My wife’s aunt, Martha Jean McCarthy, passed away earlier this month; she was 85 years old. Martha Jean was kind and generous and busy her entire life.
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution.
- More Mike Lunsford Headlines
-
MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
Man Falls Off Crane, Dies After Police Standoff
Witness Describes Fla. Face-chewing Attack
Raw Video: Cop Shoots Man Eating Another's Face
Man in Crane at Texas College Says He's Armed
Unexpected Smog in Pristine National Parks
Obama Honors Fallen Troops at Arlington Cemetery
Raw Video: Deadly Explosion at Minn. Paper Mill
Dairy Farm Uses Chiropractor to Help Cows
Romney Promises World's Strongest Military
Russia Condemns Ally Syria Over Massacre of 108
Air Canada Plane Makes Emergency Landing
Raw Video: Earthquake Shakes Evacuees in Italy
Obama Pays Tribute to Vietnam Veterans
Beryl Knocks Out Power in Florida
Raw Video: 19 Dead in Qatar Shopping Mall Fire
15 Dead in Northern Italy's 5.8-magnitude Quake
Service Dogs Help Wash. Soldiers Battling PTSD
Raw Video: Memorial Day Aboard Intrepid
New Ticks Spread Across Southeast, Diseases Rise
Beryl Makes Landfall on Florida Coast
Los Angeles Bar Bans Bachelorettes
Hamster Plays Dead
Beyonce Shows Off 60 Pound Weight Loss at Concert
Drunk Women Breaking Into Houses: A New Trend?
LeAnn Rimes Rocks Short Shorts
Gordon Ramsay Carried Off Field
Man Dies Getting Lap Dance
Kim Kardashian Claims Items Stolen from Her Luggage
Bear cools off in Calif. family's pool
Ep. 3: Chopped Desserts
Air Force dad surprises family at baseball game
Justin Bieber Wanted for Questioning for L.A. Scuffle
J.Lo and Marc's Friendly Reunion
Jet makes emergency landing after debris falls off
Cynthia Nixon Ties the Knot
Woman, 80, Falls Out of Skydive Harness Mid-Jump
Keira Reveals Engagement Ring
