The Minnesota Farm Woman

A lot of you are dreading the end of a beautiful Minnesota fall and the beginning of a long (hopefully not too long ) winter. For the first time, I am ready for it. I don’t hate the snow and cold, but I don’t love it, either. What I am most looking forward to is the freezing demise of all the Japanese beetles and flies around here. There are a gazillion of them, and I am not kidding. At first there were just a few beetles  around the doors of my breezeway, which I might mention was rebuilt tight as a drum a few years ago, so we have no earthly idea how they are getting in.  Those few were easily shooed outside and the remaining orange menaces were sucked up into the vacuum cleaner. Then the flies came, accompanied by more of  their beetle friends, and they all decided that  my home would be the place for their last hurrah. Both species seem to be at the end of their life cycle, sluggishly crawling over the walls and windows, and then, well, for lack of a better explanation, they drop like flies. Every day, I sweep up the dead and dying from under the windows as well as from all the windowsills. I read somewhere that some scientific genius imported the beetles from Japan as a predator to a pest of the soybean crop. Once the soybeans are harvested, the beetles have nowhere to go except here. The flies have always been around, but it is time to roll up the welcome mat. Of course, with my usual luck, we have had company. Each day, I casually swept up the flies and beetles from around their feet, apologizing and somewhat embarrassed, as if it were my fault.  Today, as I cooked the last of the fall tomatoes because the fruit flies have arrived to join the party, I felt a crawling sensation up the middle of my back. You guessed it…a Japanese beetle, most likely planning revenge for all of his little buddies that I vacuumed up this week. Hurry up, winter! Even though it is not yet Halloween, I’m ready for these black and orange creepy crawlers to be gone!