Heh....I know what to do, go to the neighbors that cause you the MOST TROUBLE to you and your family since you moved there. Hide a bunch of JB traps in their undergrowth!! Go out with a pen lite at night and collect the full ones! I'm just JOKING, but it IS A BIT of a cleverishly demented idea! I'm think of the man whose dog always leaves a surprise by the hydrangeas when he thinks we aren't watching. ( oh, we are....it's just that he is a big dude with a big dog- we know its him, the poops are in same spot and the same size/color...oh...sorry for the TMD. ) our dog is big also, (a beautiful walker coon hound) but she is basically a chicken. Never barks when the doorbell rings, barks/howls only when she wants in house or is hungry. Then her howls can send shivers down people's backs all over the neighborhood. here is a trick that bears to be tried: anyone willing to experiment?⬇ On another post a person, SOFl, suggested a shop vac or a dust buster!

Carrie 18 --In zone 5 you should now be seeing a big decline in beetles, so Neem oil is of little use unless rampant defoliation continues for you. However, if you had a problem this season you may have a bigger one next summer. Fertilized females lay many eggs in grassy areas. These turn into grubs which feed on the turf roots and emerge next summer. Unfortunately there is no reliable eco-friendly treatment against these grubs. Milky spore disease and parasitic nematodes are used and available but results are slow and spotty. Scotts Grubex (or Bayer equivalent) is effective and reasonably benign, but the active ingredient, Imidacloprid, is quite toxic to some, esp bees and fish (but not earthworms). Generally bees would not be affected by lawn treatment unless, say, you treat stands of clover, wildflowers, etc. France banned Imidacloprid years ago, believing it caused bee colony collapse there. However, the problem seems to have been application to seeds, esp sunflower seeds, that lead to bee contact of the resulting (toxic) plant. Recent studies of our bee colony collapse has been intense but has not lead to any connection with this insecticide, but not to a definitive cause either. So if you see turf distress and find many grubs late this summer and fall you may need to act decisively, or battle them next summer. Here is a link that might be useful: Beetle info

Bad year for young trees in Cleveland. I splurged on two 7 gallon Japanese maples and got them in the ground just in time for the cicadas to destroy 60% of their limbs over the last month. Pretty sure they have killed my 10' service berry too - every single limb coming off the trunk has egg deposits. My two little New Madrid nuttall's are likely toast too. I was clueless about cicadas before this summer, unfortunately. My one new tree that was not attacked is my little baldcypress, but that guy is now swarming with beetles. Crossing my fingers.

The NY Times put it nicely: "Mother Nature is in a perpetual state of war with California." Nonetheless, it's all mostly good, especially if you live around the coast as we do. Just came back from a 5 day trip to Monterey/Carmel and am leaving soon for 6 days on the Sonoma County coast. Left the Midwest in 1969 and don't wish to live there again. Hate winter and hate humidity, so that leaves 2 wks in the spring and 2 wks in the fall when I'm willing to visit (but I do miss those museums!).