So Cal Alert: Polyphagus Shot Hole Borer

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Polyphagus Shot Hole Borer, from UC Riverside’s Eskalen Lab

Seems the greater LA area is ground zero for the introduction of yet another exotic beetle which is killing our our beautiful native oaks and sycamores, our landscape trees, even our beloved avocado trees.

The good news is that the fungal disease propagated by the beetle can be treated if detected early. You’ll need the services of a professional arborist, but the cost of treatment will likely be less than the cost of tearing out a mature tree.

Look at this link to UC Riverside’s Eskalen Lab. Here they have several PDFs on identifying and treating the disease. They also have a map showing the spread of the disease. Of course, these are only reported infections–it could be much more widely spread.

(Note: a separate invasion was recently detected in the commercial avocado groves of San Diego county, so folks further south should be on alert too.)

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049 The Fierce Green Fire: Natural Beekeeper Patrick Pynes

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Our guest this week is organic beekeeper and gardener Patrick Pynes. I met Patrick through a comment he left on a blog post I did about Africanized bees. We talk about this subject as well as top bar hives and what it means to keep bees, as Patrick puts it, “beecentrically.” Patrick’s website is Honeybee Teacher. During the podcast we discuss:

  • Les Crowder
  • The language around beekeeping: “beecentric” vs. anthropocentric approaches to honeybees and “Bee-having” vs. “beekeeping”
  • Dealing with swarms
  • Golden Mean Top Bar hive, which you can see at backyardhive.com
  • Africanized bees
  • Aggression vs. defensiveness
  • Top bar hives and Africanized bees
  • Inspecting bees
  • Advantages of top bar hives
  • Eight frame Langstroth hives with foundationless frames
  • Diseases

If you want to leave a question for the Root Simple Podcast please call (213) 537-2591 or send an email to [email protected]. You can subscribe to our podcast in the iTunes store and on Stitcher. The theme music is by Dr. Frankenstein. A downloadable version of this podcast is here.

Our Phoebe is gone

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We had to put Phoebe down last night. She was born with serious heart defects, but despite that, was able to live four good years before finally succumbing to kidney failure. The reason she lived so long is because she had a remarkable will to survive. Even at the end, that fire still burned in her eyes, and it killed a part of us to have to put it out.

Making the decision to euthanize a pet is one of the most difficult of decisions to make. We’ve never had to do it before, because our previous pets having been lost in other ways. My heart goes out to all of you who are now remembering putting down your own pets, or who are contemplating that future possibility. Ending suffering is the right thing to do, but oh, it is a hard, hard thing.

I also wanted to thank all of you have given us and Phoebe so much support and love over the years, as you’ve followed her unlikely and miraculous progress through life.

We’re knocked off our feet today. Erik is hurting especially badly, because he and Phoebe were very close, so please forgive us if we go into radio silence for a bit.  I should add, too, that Erik is going into surgery for his kidney stones this Friday. It’s been quite the week!

If you listen to our podcast, you can expect it to go up on Thursday or Friday, instead of Wednesday.

Thank you all again, all of you, for your support.

I’m going to going to eulogize Phoebe a bit after the break, more for my own sake than anything else, since I don’t keep a diary. Expect it will be long and maudlin. Bring tissues.

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Haint Blue

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In the wake of our recent discussion of scrub jays and paper wasps, Donna, one of our regular readers, tipped me off to the Southern tradition of painting porch ceilings haint blue to discourage nesting insects — and restless spirits (“haint” derives from “haunt”) — from making themselves at home in our living spaces.

Haint blue is not a single shade of blue, but refers rather to a blue used for this purpose. The actual color could run from soft powder blue to true sky blue to bright teal.

While the cool, airy white porch with a blue ceiling speaks to elegant Victoriana, I’ll note that the practice probably does originate in the traditions of the Gullah or Geechee people, brought to this country as slaves. They’d mix up lime paint in various shades of blue and paint not only their ceilings, but around doors and windows–around every opening into their home, to protect themselves from evil spirits.

I spent a little time ( a very little time, admittedly!) looking for some solid historical writing on this haint blue business, but found nothing but hearsay. The same basic info seems to be distributed all over the Internets,  which means the resource pool is pretty small, or pretty shallow. Nonetheless, I think the idea of a blue porch ceiling very appealing, if for no other reason than it extends the open sky into our living spaces.

All this business is novel to me, a Westerner born and bred, but perhaps some of our readers from the South will have comments or experience with haint blue?

In the meanwhile, our front porch is overdue for painting, and I think I’ll try a blue ceiling this time. I’ll let you know what the wasps (and spirits) make of it.

For more information, the good folks over at Apartment Therapy have a post which covers the basics of what the Internet knows about haint blue:

Pretty and Practical: The History of “Haint Blue” Porch Ceilings

And Donna’s original comment pointed to this show, called You Bet Your Garden.

Thanks, Donna!