Japanese Beetles - the Progressives in the Garden

Abigail and Dolley readers I walked out to my back porch this morning with my cup of coffee intent on watching the sprinklers run.  I am not sure why, but I find that tremendously soothing.  Perhaps it is the sound of the water, or maybe it is the fact that I know the plants need and enjoy the extra drink.  The air was cool and crisp and held none of the oppressive humidity that is sure to follow in an hour or so.  The wind blew some of the spray my way and I sighed with contentment at all the work I have done in the last six weeks.  Then I saw them.

The dreaded invaders of mid-June, the scourge of all gardeners in the Southeast, the Japanese Beetles have returned.  Every year, they descend upon the garden in a swarm and destroy all that nature and I have worked so hard to produce.  They cluster on flowers and leaves and completely destroy everything they touch, devouring the very plants they feed on, to total destruction and death.

They are not natural to our environment, they were brought here in the Kudzu that FDR had brought in during the Raw Deal.  The beetles and the kudzu do not belong here, they do not have the natural predators they need to keep them in check.  It is fitting that the Progressives brought them here because they are emblematic of their source.

Progressives are not the gardeners of the world, they are the devourers.  They do not prepare the soil, choose the plants, place them in the correct spot, water, fertilize, and mulch them - no, they come along when the hard work is done and just as the plant begins to show its blooms they descend to feed and destroy.  If you shake the plant and blast it with water, most of them will scatter, but they will return.  If you spray the plant with chemical, most will die, but the plants are left weak and injured in the blazing hot sun and do not recover to their original pre-beetle glory.  The chemicals stink and if you are not careful they will burn the plant.  The garden smells with the pollution of their deaths and yet they continue to come.

Some gardeners will hang beetle traps, these tasty little bags of death do nothing but bring beetles from miles around to die upon themselves.  These bags are like social programs designed to help the garden when they are in fact lures for more progressives and ultimately do nothing to relieve the problems and usually escalate the population in your garden.

Come November they will be gone and I will once again proceed with the tending of the garden, in the hopes that one day, they will not return.  I expect that will only happen when I am tending my beautiful garden that the Lord has prepared for me in Heaven.  Until then, I have beetles to kill.