Linette walked up behind me just now and saw this email that I was reading. I think she was expecting to see something dirty. This caught her off guard.
Mark, I highly recommend the beneficial nematodes, they’re not chemicals, they’re little worms (and by little I mean microscopic…) You water them into the affected area after dark (sunlight kills them,) they wriggle underground and DESTROY ALL GRUBS!!!!!!!!!
I think it upset her more than if it were porn. She just walked away shaking her head.
As for the letter, it was from a person named John, a reader of Crimewave who lives here in Ypsilanti. Heres part of his first note to me on the subject.
I was just reading your Crimewave #14 and came across mention of National Cicada Day etc. I’m not sending this to be a smarty-pants know it all, but because I also live in Ypsi and have grubs destroying my lawn… The grubs that you were finding in your garden are the larvae of the Japanese Beetle and not the nymphs of the cicada which, although they also feed on underground roots, look sort of cute and ancient like little cicadas, not at all gross and disgusting like those nasty white grubs.
I guess youd have to have read the last issue of Crimewave to really understand that, but I feel a lot better for having killed all those damned little grubs now. (For the last few months, when I thought that they were cicadas, I was feeling pretty guilty. I’ve been expecting bad gardening karma.)
