"limey" wrote in message
...

"Vox Humana" wrote in message
"limey" wrote in message

My Rose of Sharon started to bloom yesterday. That seems early to me.

Picked our very first tomatoes of the season this morning. That seems
early, too, but I'm not complaining.

I'm in Maryland, zone 7.

Dora

I noticed a few blooming here in Cincinnati today - zone 6. Mine have
buds,
but no color yet. The cicadas did a number on it some of the branches
have
broken. I'm afraid that the entire yard will be filled with grotesquely
disfigured shrubs by fall.

It's amazing what damage they can do. Here, it's strange - we moved from
the previous house 17 years ago, at the height of the cicada eruptions (we
lived in the woods). However, we had not even one here when we moved in
here that June, even though we're surrounded by oaks.

This year again, Maryland was infested but we had none. I found that
there
is a small area on the Eastern Shore (where we live) which is cicada-free.
I don't know why, and I don't know the boundaries, but the area certainly
includes us. Strange. I hope everything recovers for you, Vox.

Dora

I suspect that things will recover, but gardening can be a struggle. Today
I noticed that my euonymus is simply covered with tiny white rods. They
don't look like aphids so I will have to look into euonymus scale. I don't
recall ever seeing this before. The cicadas were very localized. Some
parts of town were simply covered with them. My area wasn't as bad as
others and even some streets in our neighborhood were worse than others. My
neighbor's crab apple tree really got hit. My maple tree that touches their
tree was hardly touched. They went for my young shrubs and trees. What's
got me concerned is that our area was supposed to be in the brood 8 region
instead of the brood 10 region. In four years we may be hit again.