trouble in paradise: galls, beetles & more woes

After a lifetime spent playing other people, Drew Barrymorehas created a new career—and a home line—based on being herself. 

Though located in a stately pre-war building on New York’s Upper East Side—a neighborhood not generally associated with laid-back, loosey-goosey vibes—the sunny three-bedroom, three-bath apartment that Drew Barrymore shares with her two daughters, Olive, 10, and Frankie, 9, is anything but uptight. Her two cats and two dogs make themselves at home on the sofas, her girls regularly spread out their messy art supplies all over the dining room table, and even Jeremy, the family’s bearded dragon (who, by the way, is female), is allowed to roam free.

Kim Cornelison

Non-alcoholic beer, wine, and liquor have been staples for years for those who are sober, sober-curious, pregnant, or even just want a night off from drinking. But for those who still love to indulge in a buzzy beverage now and again, the latest and greatest alcohol trend has emerged: low-proof alcohols and low-proof cocktails. Why is this new option catching the eye of so many, and how can you make a low-proof cocktail at home? Here’s everything you need to know.

A lot of attention recently has been on periodical cicadas, which are coming out of the ground after 17 years across parts of the Southeast and much of the Mid-Atlantic region. However, another insect is about to come out of the ground in South Carolina too, and this one is not just a novelty – it can completely defoliate many plants in your yard. That’s right, folks, it’s almost Japanese beetle season!

Few insects can grab your attention like a giant stag beetle. Stag beetles are in the insect family Lucanidae. Both females and males of many Lucanid species are impressively big, but the males, with their long mouthparts that look like antlers on a stag, are amazing and intimidating. While they are also called pinching bugs by some, they are quite harmless. The males have prominent mouthparts not to bite people but rather to impress females and to push, pull, and even throw rival stag beetles away from their future mate. Think of it as two bucks fighting over a doe in the forest.

The eastern Hercules beetle is one of the largest and heaviest insects in the U.S. In South Carolina, there is only one Hercules beetle species, Dynastes tityus. These insects are a type of beetle in the family Scarabaeidae – the same family as June beetles, Japanese beetles, and dung beetles.

These beetles were found under a decaying log in the woods. They are bess beetles, also called horned passalus beetles (Odontotaenius disjunctus).

Various kinds of borers can impact crabapples, not just the apple-bark borer, I know now after reading the fact sheets from various Cooperative Extensions around the country. Unlike the one in the photo up top, with borer entry points at eye level, one of my trees has damage at the base, more like what you’d expect from a vole, but there’s a tell-tale sign, Dennis explained: the presence of frass, or sawdust-like reddish debris that’s a combination of wood particles and insect wastes. Where you once would have seen cambium, you see frass. Sometimes cracks in the bark will also ooze sap.If you have a strong stomach and want to see what I am up against, Clemson University and Colorado State have some lovely photos of borers. I would have taken the shots myself had I been able to locate the hideous creatures, but so far no luck. If you are looking for me tomorrow, I will be out there with pieces of wire probing the tunnel system that was once my tree’s infrastructure, to

AND THE BEAT GOES ON. If April was hectic, May is insane.

LIKE CLOCKWORK THEY START TO APPEAR ABOUT NOW: A first harvest of cucumbers, and also one of Japanese beetles. Into separate and quite different “brines” they go as fast as they develop, one a vinegar-salt formula, the latter a bit bubbly.

I’m thinking the nearly 6 inches of additional rain this last week won’t exactly be providing any curative effects, either.What’s wrong with my fruit? The plants they came from look otherwise-healthy (all are hybrid paste types; my heirlooms are on the critical list already, having no built-in disease resistance, apparently, to whatever ails me). I