Tuesday, July 14, 2009

The skeleton isn't always in the closet

One of our grape plants is turning into a skeleton.
This is what a healthy leaf looks like:


This is what I found this morning:



And these are the awful buggers that are doing it:


They are western grape leaf skeletonizers.

They are creepy! They're in the moth family - from the larvae stage they turn into iridescent blue moths with red heads. I went to the local nursery and got some spray for the underside of the leaves. These little caterpillars gave me the total creeps - I picked some infected leaves off and put them in garden trash can. But I had a vision of the caterpillars getting even with me. I envisioned them eating the garden trash and growing huge and then, in the middle of the night, marching out of the trash can and sliming into the house...

A skeleton in the closet is better anyday!

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