Bag Worms! Really?

 

This "Old Gold Juniper" shrub grows quite well in our Oklahoma soil, and most commonly referred to as an Evergreen, or in the case of this true story, it is called a "Damnable Bag Worm Bush."

Somewhere in between Independence, Kansas Country club and the Miami Golf and Country club or better yet between the ages of 4 and 10 years old, I found a thrill in picking bag worms off the evergreens bushes at the country club where we lived in Kansas. When we moved to Miami, Ok the bag worms once again greeted me in the early summer months.

How my father ever managed to make it fun is beyond me. My mother did nothing but suggest that her little girl was not the right age to do such dirty work. To which I more than likely said, "I can do it!

In Kansas, the caddies who showed up daily at the club for work were assigned to picking the bag worms, and landscaping jobs if they were not caddying. Since I followed them around everywhere, dad decided to teach me how to take care of the evergreens in our yard, rather than have me "wonder of to the ends of the earth" as my mother often yelled at my father. 

I think the trick or the thrill must have be pulling the sticky bag worms off and dropping them in a Folger's Coffee can filled with one--two inches of gasoline. I learned, by orneriness and observation, how to squeeze them out of the sticky brown bag and squash them flat. (I can't believe I am even writing this or recalling it.)

If I didn't put the bag worms in the coffee can with gasoline then one by one they would crawl out of the can or container and drop to the ground where I watched the brown bag wiggle like a worm before I stepped on it. 

The Miami Country club in the 1950's planted rows and rows of these lovely evergreens along the driveway entrance, and on the golf course near tee boxes. Summer after summer in my childhood years I would help dad pick bag worms. My younger sister, Jonya, joined us in the gross pleasure of picking the bagworms by hand. She especially loved squeezing them.  We were not alone, as the greenskeeper's staff and caddies most often did the job. 

When our coffee cans "runneth over" we dumped them in nearby trash barrels. The greenskeeper would take the barrels out to the shed, away from the golf course, then drop a match into the barrel and watch it go up in flames.  

Occasionally, to my delight and the kids who gathered round (the boys often volunteered to leave the swimming pool to pick nearby bag worms) dad would have us dump the containers with worms and gasoline into a nearby barrel. When everyone from the swimming pool to the upstairs breezeway was watching, dad would drop a lighted match into the barrel and boom. Our screams filled the air. Life on the golf course, as the golf pro's daughter, was never dull.

Somewhere in between my teenage years and my senior adult years I lost interest in picking bag worms. However, Mother Nature seem to dictate what gardeners and gardens must endure. In June of this year, I saw my first bag worm in our back yard. Naturally, it was not ONE bagworm, but one entire side of our glorious "Old Golden Juniper" bush, covered in wiggling brown bags.

It took me several days to build up the nerve to pick the bag worms, one by one. Being rather cautious, I choose not to use gasoline and I certainly did not have a Folger's Coffee can nearby. 

Instead, I dropped each one that didn't stick to my fingers into a plastic cup. I frequently yelped with disgust as the worms stuck to me. Squashing them when they dropped to the ground felt purely disgusting. Where was that five year old child when I needed her. 

This detestable bagworm could be a Star Wars creature in my imagination.

Then I faced a dilemma...what to do with the bagworms, since I could not toss them into a barrel and watch the explosion? Panic set in. I sealed the squiggling brown bags in a container until I could google the answer.

The easiest way to get rid of bagworms is to cut off the bags by hand and destroy them. Lift branches, clip off bagworm egg sacks, and drop them into the buckets of water with dish soap, making sure they are submerged fully. Dump the soaked bagworms into a sealed plastic bag and throw them in your trash. 

Who was to know that Dawn detergent could solve my dilemma? Thanks to the golf pro and Google, I think I can handle anything that Mother Nature sends my way.

Another one of Mother Nature's challenges is shared at:

Hail. Oh! Hail.

 

HAIL! OH, HAIL!

 

HAIL! Oh, HAIL!  

April 28, 2021

One year ago today.....

The tsunami hit the California coast and prompted a lady living on the coast in Pacifica, California to exclaim that for the first time in her life the water’s edge splashed onto her glass windows and knocked on her front door. She had experienced a tsunami…..

Living in Oklahoma we may declare or groan that we just experienced another spring tornado, or rushed to take shelter from damaging winds, but we define our experiences with exclamations.   

At 8:57 p.m. on a rainy April night, I shrieked words that cannot be published nor replicated with any sense of normalcy.

It had been a grey green day in central Oklahoma, one that makes us weary and alert at the same time. My phone alerts were on, as they are in the spring time, but by evening the threat of storms had driven east and we relaxed in our safe dry homes.

On Facebook I was glued to pictures being posted of a puppy we had bought online. The house was quiet and I was anxious to meet our new dog in a few weeks.

I stepped into the kitchen to fix a hot evening tea. I had no sooner hit the start button on the microwave when I stepped to the side of the counter to reach for a spoon. In that moment an “ice ball” the size of baseball crashed through our northwest kitchen window sending glass flying. The “ice ball” hit the cupboards holding the microwave, just missing my head by a foot or two. My exclamations were not calm nor respectable, and in fact, were extremely ear-piercing.

My husband was beside me in an instant. We felt the winds and hail bust through our double panned windows, glass shards covered our floor, counters, and clothing.  Nothing had prepared us for this violent storm. No sirens. No television warnings. The ten mile black wall of ice and clouds had not been detected and thus hundreds of us in a small five-ten mile swath of land lost windows, roofs, lawn furniture and saw our cars dented beyond repair, all in the an eight minute storm. 

Leaning out our broken windows this is what we saw.

By 9:30 p.m. the neighborhood was alive with people standing in yards, rushing to check on each other, garage doors opening, lumber and plastic being dug out of storage bins, and phone calls being made to friends.  

We found enough heavy plastic to cover our two open windows for the evening, and with another roll of heavy plastic we helped neighbors across the street cover their windows. For the next week I found shards of glass under kitchen cabinets, in the nearby carpet and we felt unseeable pieces of glass in our feet. 

By daylight we were in shock to see the overall devastation of the neighborhood. Giant glass knives buried in our yards, tree limbs dug into the ground like spikes, spring leaves knocked off the limbs leaving the trees barren, garden flowers destroyed beaten to death by ice, colorful pots busted and scattered over gardens like abstract mosaics.

Bird feeder flung from a tree, broken tiles and more glass.

In the end, all I could whisper was “thank heavens no one was injured.”

Ten months later, due to the massive window and roofing losses, most of the homes in our neighborhood had been repaired, but many still show signs of the hail along the fence lines, torn screens, and a few windows still boarded up.