The Six Hundred Dollar Stinkbug

 The brown marmorated stinkbug, Halyomorpha halys, has been in America since it was accidentally introduced from China or elsewhere in Asia to Allentown, PA in 1998. That is not very far from me as the stinkbug flies. The blasted things have spread like wildfire. I saw my first one while visiting a friend in Loudon Co. Virginia maybe 10 years ago. I took a hand towel out of the linen closet and this big gross stinkbug fell out of it. There were more. They were everywhere. He said the side of his house had seethed with them that fall. It wasn't long before they started coming to spend the winter in my house in Ohio. 

I had to laugh the other day when someone asked me on Facebook what I do with stinkbugs in my house. Do I rescue them, take them outside? Should she?  I was like, man, I kill those things any way I can. I can't even count the ways I hate them. I was bemused that she seemed to want someone's permission to kill them. 

I have a favorite orchid that I've been propagating since 2005. Encyclia cordigera has not looked this good in my windows for many a year. This orchid can perfume the entire back of the house when it's in bloom.

These photos are from 2018. I haven't seen blossoms like this for at least five years. 

All because of stinkbugs.

You see, when brown marmorated stinkbugs invade your house in winter, they need to eat, so they look for tender young plant sprouts to sink their needle-sharp snoots into. After a couple years of utter mystery as to why the bloom spikes of my precious orchids always turned black and withered away, I finally caught a brown marmorated stinkbug red-footed, sucking the life out of a new bloom spike. 

So that's all I need now, with deer suddenly eating everything outside, is to have stinkbugs IN MY HOUSE ruining my houseplants, sucking the life from new unfolding leaves as well as flower stalks. 

The little spikes Encyclia cordigera sends out start out tiny and lengthen daily. It takes them weeks to mature, weeks in which the stinkbugs are free to plunder them and ensure that I get no beautiful purple blossoms to perfume my rooms.

I've tried so many times to cover them in netting but the stinkbugs almost always get in and kill them. 

I can't even describe how depressing it is to nurture plants for a year, waiting for that ONE SPIKE, and have it end up like this. No, the plant won't make a replacement spike. It's done until this time next year.

Last year I managed to save one spike, but I had to look at this for about eight weeks.

Only when the flowers unfurl and harden off completely is it safe to unwrap them.

This year I have wrapped the growing points in several layers of Saran and taped them up as securely as I can, given that they're still growing. We'll see how that works. When the spikes get too long to wrap like this, I'm planning to use nylon mesh paint strainers (the same ones I use on milkweed plants to protect monarch caterpillars from predatory, uh, STINKBUGS in late summer.

Like this one, genus Podisus, which I found last summer with a last-instar monarch caterpillar hanging dead from its piercing strawlike mouthpart. It looks strikingly similar to a brown marmorated stinkbug. It met the same fate. Growl.

My plastic-wrapped Encyclias. The fun never stops. Seems like everything I love to grow has its own wrecking crew, even inside my home.

It gets worse. Last summer my not-spectacularly-trusty John Deere x300 lawn tractor started having a new problem. It would run OK for a little while, then start to surge, and suddenly die, just like it was running out of gas. I'd have to leave it until it cooled down, and most of the time I could get it started and running long enough to get it back to the garage, but whatever I needed it for was off the day's To Do list.

 It was Not Convenient. 

My dear neighbor Bill W. helped me. He put a new fuel filter on it, and then a new fuel pump. Each time we put a new part on it, we thought we had it covered. But then it did it again a couple weeks ago while I was happily hauling winter brush. Just up and quit way out the meadow. 

I let it sit, used starting fluid on it the next morning in a light snowfall, and when it roared back to life, I just barely limped back to the garage before it surged, weakened and quit for good, dead as a donut.

It was time to call Bridgeport Equipment, bite the bullet, and pay through the nose to have them come out and pick up the tractor and finally diagnose what was wrong with it.

Days went by. Almost a week. I knew they didn't have many tractors in for repair. I started to lose hope.

And finally I got a call. 

They'd set my tractor up with what they called a "donor tank."

I loved that. Like dialysis for a tractor. 

And it ran fine. Then they knew there was something wrong in the fuel tank or line.

And guess what that something was. 

Being a Science Chimp, I appreciated the little baggie stapled to the invoice.

There was a stinkbug IN MY FUEL TANK.

Blocking the fuel line to a trickle. 

Making my life even more beautiful.

For those who wonder, "Misc" is what they charged me to come out and get my tractor, and drop it off, because I don't have a truck to haul it myself. 

Now you've seen a 632 dollar stinkbug. Isn't that special?

They make it mighty hard to have nice things.

Turning Inward--Home and Garden Solace

Out in the greenhouse, I went to pull something I thought was a withered bud off Hibiscus "The Path."

It was not a plant part. It was a huge female Bold Jumping Spider (Phidippus audax). And she had something in her jaws.  A brown marmorated stinkbug! I cannot imagine eating one of these, but maybe if you avoid the stink glands, you're good...This one was on a bud, sucking the life out of it, before its career was summarily ended by Ms. Phidippus.

I love jumping spiders. I hope this one makes a million babies. I'll put them all in my bedroom with the orchid collection. I let jumping spiders sit in my hand and zoop around on my arms and I have never, ever had one try to bite. No, they look up at me as if they understand that I am their friend.

I've had a bad bug year in the house. Zillions of Asian multicolored ladybugs. And way too many  brown marmorated stinkbugs. I hate them both with a passion. Here's what stinkbugs do to my orchid flower spikes INSIDE MY HOUSE. They pierce them and suck all the juices. This would have been an Encyclia cordigera flower spike with 5 incredibly fragrant lilac flowers on it, but for ONE stinkbug that I found on it. Ladybugs will pierce and chew orchid spikes too! I haaaate them so.

In past years, I bought yards of pale green tulle netting and made growing bags for the plants. It was a real pain because the stinkbugs and ladybugs still managed to find their way in. 

This year I hit on a more efficient protective device. It's Saran wrap, taped around the stem of the flower spike, with plenty of room for the buds to grow inside their makeshift protective bag.

It's ugly as hell, but it works. I have to look at bagged flower spikes for months. But oh, when they bloom! It'll all be worth it. 

In years past, before ladybugs and stinkbugs. This, my friends, is what's at stake. Encyclia cordigera:

Not only are they cool looking, they smell like muguet in heaven.

For some reason, stinkbugs leave Phalaenopsis bud spikes alone. They like to kill off rare orchids instead. Here's a fabulously graceful, full spike of 13 on its way. I've had this one for about five years. I remembered to use  orchid fertilizer late this winter. Duh. They do better if you feed them!

Next day, more are open. It's that ever-changing thing I love about growing plants. Checking in on them, seeing what's changed. Seeing the results of a well-timed feeding.

I like this strangely colored mini. It's more blue than magenta.

And this little clownface opened yesterday, and made me laugh. The whole plant isn't 5" across.

Speaking of mini, I'm in love with this supertiny aroid, Syngonium podophyllum "Mini Pixie."

The plant to the far left is the mother plant. I've had it since I took a cutting off my niece's plant, Thanksgiving 2017. And it still isn't 4" tall. I've split all these babies off it, and each one makes a gorgeous little specimen, variegated broadly with white. They're like microminiature caladiums. I have heard that people use this plant in fairy gardens. This is not a fairy garden, LOUISE. It is a planter with some very small plants and an oversized toad in it. Because Homey don't do fairy gardens. Well, I will put a toad in a planter, but that's as far as it goes. 

Another thing I'm growing in the house is sprouts. Many kinds. My very favorite, though, are sunflower. These are ready to harvest. You start them by sprinkling black oil sunflower seed atop moist potting mix, vermiculite or orchid mix, and you cut them off at soil level with a scissors when the shells finally pop off. It only takes about 10 days to get them to harvest. If you let them grow too long they'll get true leaves, and those are hairy, and not so good to eat. But the nutty flavor when you harvest them right after the shells pop off is amazing. So, so good. Anyone can do this. You don't have to live in the country! Just put them near a sunny windowsill and they'll turn into food.

The lettuce plants in the tower room ranch all bolted when Phoebe came home, but we got maybe six big salads out of them before I yanked them out of their planters. New understudies in the greenhouse here. I've got the planters all refreshed and ready. I'll grow them on the front porch from here on out, until October/November, when I'll have a new cohort ready for the winter tower room fun.

Outdoors in my shade bed, I'm watching these Virginia bluebells. When they are in full bloom, I figure the woodland plants will be, too. Then it'll be time to hit the trail! This year, I'll have both kids and Shila (at a distance) with me. Bliss. Heaven. 

Our daffodils have been absolutely spectacular this year. 

Phoebe's been making elegant bouquets. She says we have 13 varieties. I have never bought fancy bulbs. I have, however, dug a few here and few there at the margins of old cemeteries and abandoned homesteads, preferring to shop the heirloom section of the Earth's variety store.

Many firsts this year. We've tackled a bunch of spring chores much, much earlier than usual, simply because the weather seems finally to be breaking a bit, and we're here, and I have help and the time to do it.
The vegetable garden is cleaned up (with a team of three!), fully tilled, and I planted the peas this morning!! In order to get this done, I had to get the bonsais out of there.  I heel the bonsais into the vegetable garden in early winter. I take them out of their pots, dig a pit and sink them about a foot below ground level, and they do just fine. These are the small ones.

The big maples are getting really big.  I-can-hardly-lift-them now big. The one on the left is 43" tall. The right-hand tree, also my oldest at about 37 years, is about 38" tall. Scale is deceptive here. 

I'm so excited to see them leaf out slowly. It's the most beautiful thing to watch. Sometimes I'm so busy in spring I can't even get them potted before the leaves unfurl. This spring is different. I'm busy, but with different things. The things that fill my heart. Getting these trees out where I can talk with them and watch them change every hour is the thing.

Right now, this is my best looking tree. But things change.



This smaller one has real potential. I love that sideways sweep it has.



I've only got four potted maples to tend now. You may remember I sent the fifth out the meadow to become what it was born to be. It was so dang big, and it was trying to get out of its pot, getting taller and taller. I gave it a bigger pot and it started sending out crazy straight sprouts, headed for the stars.



The obvious thing was to liberate it, and put it out by Bill, where it gets daily visits and watering when it needs some.

I was most gratified to have a shaft of sunlight fall on this tree just as I was composing its picture.

 It is so very beautiful now. I can't wait to see it become a full-sized tree, like the two liberated bonsais in our yard. I mean, I can wait.  I want to wait. It'll just be fun to watch it all unfold.

This western red cedar that I got in maybe 1987(?) when it was about 8" tall has grown into the most beautiful specimen, complete with sweet little blue cones in season. It was given to me by a gentleman I knew in Connecticut who I'm sure is long gone. He asked that I remember him as long as I have the tree. His name was Dodie and he was wonderful. Loved bluebirds and used to put orange halves on dowels around his yard for the orioles. It was in his yard that Vanna, my Savannah sparrow, was found, rendered flightless by a cat. I kept Vanna for 17 1/2 years, effectively defining the possible life expectancy of that species. That's how Dodie and I became friends. Vanna is long gone, too, but the tree and my memories live on.

Thirty-three years on, here's that cedar you gave me, Dodie. It's 21" tall now. 

Still taking care of it, and the bluebirds too. They are initiating clutches earlier than any year in the 27 I've been keeping records. Birds are always telling us things. Those of us who listen to them have to tell the rest of the humans. 

Stinkbugs for Breakfast

I've mentioned some of the prey items taken by Carolina wrens. One thing I noticed in the time I spent observing the family: The wrens seemed to bring the same species of insect all day long, then switch to another species the next day. It was really interesting. For instance, there were two Daddy Longlegs Days in a row, and then they switched to camel crickets, and brought those almost exclusively for an entire day. And then...they switched to green stinkbugs. I couldn't believe my eyes. They knocked all the legs off them, just as they did the daddy longlegs (but didn't bother to do with the camel crickets). Even legless, there was no mistaking the peculiar oblong, beveled, emerald green bodies of the stinkbugs. Imagine!!

I run into a stinkbug on a raspberry or mulberry and even tasting where it was sitting makes me gag. Imagine having your mom ram one down your throat. OK, now imagine having her and Dad offer them to you all day long.


This baby wouldn't swallow another stinkbug. He was fed up with them. So Mom had to remove the bug and offer it to someone else.

He just kept his mouth open and refused to swallow it, so she plucked it back out and gave it to the baby to his left.

Now you would think, as bad as they smell and taste, that stinkbugs would be much too noxious and maybe even poisonous to Carolina wrens. Apparently not, but there is always the picky baby to contend with. These birds taught me so much!

I've spent part of today soaking the Bird Spa dish in a strong bleach solution, then scrubbing it a million times with Comet, trying to remove the oxidation and algae stains that permeate its rough surface. The stains look better, but aren't gone. And as soon as I put away the hose, giving it the last rinse and fill, the birds started coming: families of seven tufted titmice at a time, pairs of cardinals, goldfinches, chickadees, red-winged blackbirds, mourning doves. It's a party out there, and well worth the considerable effort to keep it as clean as possible. Speaking of effort: It's a horrible feather mite year; most of my cardinals are bald, and I get a load of mites on my arms every time I visit my bluebird boxes. I've been changing nests and scrubbing boxes, trying to stem the infestations. Today I power-washed the feeders for good measure. I figure the least I can do is keep their bath and feeders clean. Every now and then an errant mite, left over from my constant dealings with birds and their trappings, runs along my eyebrow or my neck, and it sends me into a frenzy of itching. It's not the first time I've been glad I'm not a bird. Imagine carrying thousands of 'em in your feathers all the time.

And having your mom serve stinkbugs for breakfast AGAIN.