The month of October has been unusually warm and dry here in my area of West Virginia. We’re actually in a severe drought. I don’t live in the mountainous, higher altitude part of the state; I’m in the foothills and the Ohio River Valley area. We didn’t have our first frost of the season until just the other day which is a bit later than normal.
I love autumn but, as with most things, there is both good and bad that comes along with it. It’s the end of the flower gardening season and the end of warm summer mornings on the front porch swing. It’s still getting warm in the afternoons here but mornings are just plain COLD. I’m an early riser so if I go out on the front porch now at 7:00 a.m. on weekend mornings it’s liable to be 33 degrees.
Because of our drought, the autumn leaves are not as vivid as they normally are at this time of the year. Some of the leaves have even fallen off the trees prematurely. I’m already ankle deep in dry leaves in my yard. As I was raking them the other day, I considered making a big pile of them and jumping into them like I did when I was a kid. But after imagining what my neighbors would think if they looked out their windows and saw a middle-aged woman doing a swan dive into a pile of leaves, I decided against it.
I built a stone fire pit in my yard late this summer because I wanted to be able to have outdoor fires in cooler weather. I made my first fire last Friday evening when the weather finally turned colder. I invited Missy, Jon, and my dad to come over as well as two neighbors and a few others. We toasted marshmallows and hotdogs and drank apple cider. It was fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I had roasted hotdogs over an open fire. Decades???
Another not-so-good thing that came with the cooler weather was some unexpected visitors. And I don’t mean those who came to toast marshmallows. These visitors came buzzing into my house the first day or two that the weather turned cold.
Yes, a bunch of Asian Lady Beetles have invaded my country abode. Asian Lady Beetles are different than regular (native) lady bugs. They enter buildings through tiny cracks or vents when cooler weather first starts. Native lady bugs don’t do that. The Asian ones come into homes and buildings because they are looking for places to hibernate for the winter. If you’ve had your Wheaties this morning, you may astutely guess that Asian Lady Beetles came from, yes, Asia. Exactly what we need; more illegal immigrants. Just sayin’.
I grew up in this area and we didn’t used to get these pesky visitors when I was kid. The only pesky visitor I remember when I was a kid was the little boy next door. He punched me in the stomach once and, another time, he ate all the candy pills from my yellow plastic doctor’s kit. If you still live in this area, Keith Jones, you’d better watch your back.
Back to my story, these other pests came into the United States about 20 years ago as a means to control aphids and then they ended up becoming a problem themselves. When asked to return to the country from whence they came, the Asian Lady Beetles declined to do so. Now a good portion of them reside at 8 Kings Court Estates, Huntington, West Virginia.
Three or four ladybugs are charming when they’re in the garden, but 50+ of them in your house . . . not so much. They have all congregated at the highest point of my vaulted living room ceiling. They don’t fly around the house; they are all just quietly huddled up there in a corner. I guess they are preparing for their long winter’s nap.
On our local news there is a county extension agent who appears on TV and gives gardening tips. One of his recent shows talked about what to do when the Asian Lady Beetles started coming indoors. He suggested that homeowners use their vacuum cleaners to suck the bugs up and then empty them outside. But my uninvited guests are so high up on the ceiling that I can’t reach them with the vacuum or with bug spray.
At least they are quiet and well-behaved. I’m trying to be positive. It could be worse; it could be spiders or roaches or Jehovah’s Witnesses. If I have to put up with a home invasion, then I guess it’s best to be invaded by ladies.
I have been lucky because those little pests haven’t been able to find my house even though it shows up on Google Earth plain as day. I was at my mother-in-laws house a year or so ago and we were trying to enjoy sitting on the front porch when we were ambushed by the little critters. It was like we were in a swarm of little ninja bugs. You couldn’t talk because they would fly in your mouth and you were afraid to breathe because they might fly up your nose. Have you noticed that when you swat them, they have a very unpleasant odor too? We had to fight them off the best we could and retreat into the house. By the way, I love your fire pit. When I was growing up in Catlettsburg, Mom would let us build fires and roast hot dogs all the time – it was fun for us and she didn’t have to cook. We roast hot dogs all the time when we are camping and usually about this time of year my mom has a big wiener roast for the whole family and we all sit around the fire and tell stories on each other from our childhood days.
I guess the ladies haven’t figured out how to use Google Earth yet so they decided to hit the first house they saw when they came out of the woods.
When I was having my weinie roast we kept hearing rustling sounds in the woods and it was kind of spooky (which was perfect for this time of year). I’ll have to find someone to tell ghost stories next time. Do you know any?
I want to hire you to build the fire pit-it looks awesome. I think we have neighborhood restrictions that won’t let us do that….bummer
You all have a great fire pit. Mine is very rustic and we’ll see how it holds up.
I’m figuring out that if I call things ‘rustic’ then I can get away with all kinds of stuff. If I don’t do things right, or if things look like they are barely holding together, I just say, “I was going for that rustic look to match my country surroundings.”
Pretty handy excuse since I never know what I’m doing when I attempt all these do-it-yourself projects.
I guess we are weird but my mom and I like these beetles! I’m going to ask her if she’s heard of the Asian variety since she had about 10-12 of them in her upstairs window not long ago. They didn’t seem to move much.
I would rather have these any day than wasps, spiders or cockroaches all of which are plentiful down here in TX. Long live Asian lady beetles!!!
I like lady bugs too. When they are swarming all over the outside of your house and then start crawling through all the cracks and begin congregating on your ceiling, they aren’t quite as likable.
AMERICAN lady bugs are better than the ASIAN ones. Our native lady bugs have better manners. They don’t go where they aren’t invited