BAGPIPES AND FALL WEB WORMS

"MOSTLY THURSDAYS" CONCERT AT CHRIST CHURCH

THE HERB GARDEN

FALL WEB WORM INFESTATION

Friday, 8:30 AM.  64 degrees F , wind N, just strong enough to create a pleasant breeze.  The humidity is 70% and the barometer is trending down slightly at 30.17".  It is a pleasant morning, and a good day to try out my new chain saw.

The little herb garden in the back yard is quite pretty now.  It even has an almost-ripe tomato.

   The "Mostly On Thursdays" community concerts have been quite successful this summer, and it was our  little Christ Episcopal Church's turn to be the venue yesterday evening.  The little chapel was packed for the concert by Minnesotans Laura MacKenzie and Gary Rue, who performed "traditional wind powered music" of Ireland, Scotland, Cape Breton, Central France and Northern Spain.  They sang, and played bag pipes, flutes, concertinas and other "wind powered" instruments, accompanied by guitar.  The performance was truly intellectually as well as musically satisfying.

   The fall web worms, caterpillars that feed on apple and other trees while protected inside a silken web that they spin, are yet another sign of approaching fall.  There are several quite similar races of these insects, and if the season is long enough there can be more than one generation which feeds on tree foliage.  Like the tent caterpillars that appear in spring, they do little real damage to their host trees other than causing them to be unsightly.  The spring tent caterpillars feed under silken "tents" as well, but the webbing is located at the crotches of young branches, the "worms" emerging to feed on host foliage and retreating to their webs for safety.  The fall web worms feed within their webbing, which encompasses terminal branches and leaves.  

   The easiest and most environmentally neutral control of both tent caterpillars and fall web worms is to cut out the branches and foliage covered by the tent or web and burn or bury them.  Insecticides are hard to use on these pests because they are so well protected.  If one is not squeamish they are also easy to destroy by by crushing them by hand inside their webs, if they are within reach.