#Cankerworms and Dandelions

They are everywhere. They are called Cankerworms. The grass is alive with them; they are crawling on the driveway and on the patio. The leaf trees are infected, mainly the fruit trees and the birch trees. And they eat the leaves. Some of our green ash trees are bare of leaves.

Today I sprayed them as they crawled up the trunks of the trees; I sprayed the branches and the leaves and I sprayed them one by one as they climbed up the walls of our house. I thought I finally had them all. What a silly fool I was. When I came back 30 minutes later the wall was alive with cankerworms. I picked them with needle nose pliers and collected them in a jar filled with water and I stepped on the ones on the patio until the green gunk squirted out of them, but it brought me no pleasure.

I am exhausted and I’m giving up. For today anyway. Perhaps tomorrow I will begin the battle again. Maybe I will be victorious, but I am not holding my breath. The white stucco walls of the house are black and they are back on the patio. They are even crawling across our barbeque. When I close my eyes I see nothing but colonies of cankerworms. They are on the move, though. Hopefully the whole gang of them will cross the street and attack our neighbor’s place. He doesn’t spray his dandelions, but he might just spray the cankerworms.

Cankerworms are actually not worms, they are the caterpillar of a moth. Just in case you didn't know. The ones that crawled up the walls of our house will spin a cocoon and attach themselves to the overhang where they will make our house look ugly. I will have to remove them with a long stick. I remember doing that years ago at our cottage when we had an invasion of cankerworms.

I've had enough of dealing with these critters. If anyone from Peta or some other animal activist-moron complains how I treat the cankerworms they can kiss my Arm and I hope their place gets overrun by them and a plaque of mosquitoes at the same time. We'll get those pretty soon. We're living in a cruel and hostile world and we are fighting a constant battle to stay alive or keep our sanity and comfort.

Talking of dandelions—our lawn is covered with them. I sprayed once already but it did nothing. They all bloomed and the seeds are spread by the wind and make new dandelions. I cut the lawn today and I bagged the grass. Usually, I keep the grass and use it in my walkways in the garden as mulch. I also keep it to fill garbage bags which I use in the fall to put on our sewage field to catch the snow in the winter. However, I don’t want the dandelion seeds. I’ll take the lot to the dump where they compost the grass and leaves people bring.

The reason I have so many dandelions is because our neighbor behind us and the one across the street do not believe in spraying. Their lawn is yellow when things begin to grow and then fluffy white with the dandelion blooms. Those seeds all end up on our lawn. It seems even with the dandelions I am fighting a losing battle, but I refuse to give up. Some of my other neighbors also spray but not all, unfortunately.