Tumbling Trees.

The latest reports are out on the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) eradication of the Asian longhorn beetle. The numbers are staggering, and those of you living in neighboring counties to those mentioned -- or neighboring states -- might want to take a long hard look at the numbers before you decide that it's not really anything you need to worry about.

New York, 1st detection in August 1996. They found 6,275 infested trees. They have removed 18,467 trees. That is roughly three times the amount that were 'sick'.

New Jersey. Since October 2002. 729 infested, 21,981 trees removed. This is 30 -- yes, 30 times the number of injured trees.

Massachusetts, August 2008. 22,264 infested, 31,925 removed.

Ohio June 2011. 9091 infested trees, 8809 removed.

The good people in Bethel, the most affected area in Ohio, are fighting to save their trees. They acknowledge the need for infested trees to be removed, but are objecting to the destruction of the healthy. For most tree owners, they would porefer to have the trees vaccinated.
Yes, that can be done.
It is even less expensive than tree cutters, and chippers, and mulchers, and cherry pickers and earth movers and fuel for machinery (checked the prices on the fuel lately? -- bet you have.)

I want you, wherever you are, to go out in your backyard, or to your closest, favorite public park.
Look around.
Pick a tree, any tree, since this is an exercise in imagination.
The tree you have selected is sick. It has a bug. This bug is not airborne (as they say about viruses). But the tree is sick.
Say "Good-bye, favorite tree."

Now look around and see the other trees.
See the three closest trees.
Say "good bye" to them.
They must be assassinated because their neighbor was sick.

But wait, the neighboring trees have neighbors too. Pick any number, 3 or 30 or any other number, of the neighboring trees' neighbors.
Say "good bye" to them, too. They are neighbors of the neighbors of the sick tree, so they, too, must die.

Now, look around your back yard, or your park.
Are there any trees left?
Is there any shade left in your yard?
Are there any windbreaks left around your house?
What will hold the soil in your yard when the snow melts or the rains pound down?


My friends, this can happen to you. Yes, you may live far away -- but with the likes of Superstorm Sandy, (and the USDA wasted no time laying down the law in New Jersey afterwards,) is anywhere far enough away? Yes, you may not have the specific species of bugs that are eating these species of trees.

But you DO have a government agency that says it can come in and remove and confiscate your personal property (trees) because they can.

Infested trees need to be removed. No one is arguing with that. And the government has every right to take those down at its expense for the public good.

But they are claiming the right to take down all the trees that might become bug-sick. Not just likely, but "maybe perhaps someday might."

If they are allowed to do that here, in the heart of Ohio, in the nation's scenic heart, why do you think they will stop when they get to your back yard? They will be able to point to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Ohio as having established "THE" precedent.

Goodbye backyard.
Goodbye parks.
Goodbye trees.

Help the Bethel ALB group stop this trampling of property rights.
Before it becomes your rights that are lost.

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=d9ab319101533a13ab1c45685&id=587ea78b12

Hailey and the Cricket

Hailey, age 4, has developed a bug phobia. When she sees one, she screams and runs and cries.

I am one mom/grandmom/aunt/sister who has no patience -- and I mean NO PATIENCE -- with that behavior. Unless it's a wasp. But that's one bug, one specific kind of bug, not any and all. Anyway, I have no patience with that. Time to nip it in the bud. (Or in the bug. just to be funny.)

This is somewhat natural for the age, I suppose. I never paid a lot of attention to it when my girls went through it, because of that no patience policy I may have mentioned. The sudden appearance of any critter is startling and evokes an "oh!" or an "Eek!"

I told Hailey's mom I'd like to slap silly whoever taught Hailey to act that way, but that it wouldn't be satisfying to do so, because said person has already attained that state. (Translation: She's silly to start with.)

Hailey sees two kinds of bugs. Flying bugs are flies. Crawling bugs are spiders.
Size or color doesn't matter. Except in the bathtub. Anything black in the bathtub is a cause for panic, has been for about three years. Instant hysteria, climb up the gramma, refuse to put a toe in the water, plain basic panic. (See, I do know the difference.)

Now, there are flies that get in her swimming pool. Spiders, too. She wouldn't get in the pool with flies and spiders, so I got her a net. The first few times I skimmed it for her. Then I showed her. She still refused to have anything to do with the skimming.
So, mean Mammaw took her and bodily stood her in the center of the pool, wrapped Hailey's little fingers around the net handle, and held on to Hailey's arm and made it swish swish, then showed her how to knock the stuff onto the ground.
After that, it was up to Hailey. If she wants to swim, she either has to swim with the bugs or skim them out herself. Meanie Mammaw would sit on the porch and let her holler, whine, scream,whimper. If she wants to swim, she knew what she had to do. It was up to her, old Meanie said.

The next morning she hopped in the pool, skimmed it and showed  the spiders to that old meanie.

This visit Hailey started screaming running through the house and even refusing to go potty because there are crickets hopping around in the almost remodeled bathroom. Someone had to go to the bathroom with her, to protect her from the spiders that jump on her.

So, on one trip to the bathroom, we started talking about the bugs. The jumping spiders that are called cricket and that jump in the wall and make noise.

"They make noise."
"They're singing to you."
"SingING?"
"Yes, they are in the wall singing to you."
Then we experimented with walking around in the bathroom, and how the cricket would stop singing whenever we moved too close to the wall, and then start singing when we'd be quiet and be still.

We headed out of the bathroom, and the cricket chirped twice. I said, "It sang 'good-bye for now.' "

Hailey stopped in her tracks and looked at me. "It was singing TO ME?"
I said yes.

Wonder dawned in her face. "Oh, Mammaw. You mean it's nice?"

Environmental Assessment: Asian Longhorn Beetle: Bethel Ohio

To anyone interested in this fight -- yes, that should be you, if  it isn't -- the Environmental assessment has been prepared, and the officals want to hear from you. They are seeking opinions from the public. Please read the report thoroughly -- it will take a while and multiple readings -- before deciding your stand. But please, do take a stand. Do make your voice heard. The report can be read here: http://www.bethelalb.com/ALB-OH-ClermontCounty-2012-EA.pdf

Now, they are not promising that they will act on what people tell them. They are a government organization which means essentially that they will infer everything and promise nothing. But they are asking for opinions. Let's give them that much.

This is important to everyone, although it is most important to the people of Bethel. It is their trees that are being eradicated. (Not the beetle.) It is their properties being destroyed, it is their countryside being laid bare for flooding and wind erosion. It is their small hometown being turned into a hot spot.

The numbers are hard to comprehend, but there are people gifted with the ability to put the concepts into words. Bill Skvarla, beetle activist, offers this example:  If the street tree in front of the Midway Theatre is the only tree in Bethel that has a beetle, every single healthy uninfested host tree in the entire Village will be destroyed according to USDA's EA-Alternative B.

Imagine that.
Imagine if your home town had to be denuded of all its tall shady trees because a tree in the town part of town had a problem. Would you like that? Would it seem reasonable to you to lose all the shade on your house because someone a half mile away had bug holes (and maybe-probably bugs) in one of their trees?

This is a problem for everyone, not just Bethel. If the government can do this to us, they can do it to others. Maybe the excuse won't be the Japanese long-haired beatles. Or green borers. But There will be something,
I promise you.

And you will have to suffer it, because allowing this without a fight sets a precedent. A precedent of government takeover of your private property. A government takeover of your community's landscape. A government takeover of your right to stand up and say "No!" to the chainsaws and bulldozers.

Read.
Research.
And speak out and speak up.



http://bugs.clermontcountyohio.gov/ALB.aspx;
http://www.agri.ohio.gov/TopNews/asianbeetle/;
http://clermont.osu.edu/news/asian-longhorned-beetle-found-in-ohio-osuextension-offers-information-hotline; the APHIS ALB plant pest page
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/plant_pest_info/asian_lhb/index.s
html.

Draw Deep, Reach High.

To me, there is nothing more beautiful than a tree. It doesn't matter the type, or the season, or the shade, shape or color. I love trees.
Even ugly trees have a beauty, a symmetry (or dis-symmetry) that catches the eye and takes the breath away.
Is there anything more striking to the eye than the deep luscious green of a Scotch Pine or Blue Spruce towering against the pale blue of a December sky?

Trees connect earth and sky, drawing from deep within and reaching for the unreachable. They maintain beauty and grace as they do so, even in unlikely ways from unlikely places. When bare in winter, their bare bones etch  lines on the horizon -- pen-and-ink drawings of starkness.  Fully gowned in summer greens, these bones peek through, offering glimpses of grace and strength. Spring pastels greet the return of the sun, and the colors are muted for eyes no longer accustomed to bright colors. Autumn brings a bright farewell from the deciduous, a blast of color that will fade in our memories -- nothing could really have been that brilliant, could it? -- until spring tiptoes the colors of life back into our lives.

Our trees are under attack.
Now, under Mother Nature's rules, everything is always under attack from something else. It's the way of growing stronger, living longer. What doesn't kill, makes stronger, no matter the species.

The attacks I speak of are not those of Mother Nature, although She started it. She sent an explosion, an excursion, an invasion of tree-eating bugs. We responded, trying to eradicate the bugs, not with insecticides, not with vaccines or medicines. We have responded to this threat to our trees by destroying the trees.

Can you imagine if this logic was applied to people? (It has been, in the past. Now called racism, and no one wants to admit their part in it.) Can you think of any more diseased species than Humans? Can you think of any more destructive force than Humans?  Has any species trampled more ground, destroyed more places, ruined more lives than Humans?

It may be that Mother Nature has had enough of us. She may be getting ready to destroy our habitats, to tear down our homes, to remove the blight of our being from the face of her earth.  Who can blame her?

And the trees will stand tall against the landscape. Their roots will draw deep from the Earth herself. Their arms will lift to the sky, seeking sun and light and fresh air.

 Between earth and sky, the trees will remain.

If we let them.