Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to talk about weevils, and not much else. You may remember me from such posts as “Under The Arbor”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
I’m sitting under the kitchen table, enjoying the air from the swamp cooler, because it’s been hot.
It’s been hot for so, so long. We had a few nice cool days when we thought it might rain, but we only got a few drops.
We’ve had a few drops of rain almost every day for the last three weeks but nothing substantial.
This is really boring, and stressful for the guy I live with.
A week or so ago the guy I live with noticed that one of the big yuccas in the front garden “looked wrong”. The leaves had turned purplish brown.
So a few days ago he decided to push against the trunk of the yucca, and sure enough, the trunk was rotted.
He said weevils did this. Specifically, snout weevils.
So he went about cutting down the yucca. The smell was incredible, sort of like artichoke and tequila, according to the guy I live with, though he hasn’t smelled tequila in ages.
It stank up the whole front yard. Not really an awful smell, but not the kind of smell usually associated with gardening.
The guy I live with said this yucca dying partly wasn’t bad, because it was planted under a desert willow (Chilopsis linearis), which he would have said was a dumb thing to do if he had known how big the yucca would get, but he didn’t.
But partly it is bad, because there’s a problem now: disposing of the leaves. The leaves have to be cut up, to make them safe for the trash collectors, and put in a paper trash bag. Even though we have a compost bin for things like this, with weevils you have to throw away the infected plant.
The base of the plant will have to be tossed, too.
Now technically, the soil is supposed to be drenched with some sort of poison, but that’s not going to happen here.
That’s all I have for today. I’ll leave you with a picture of me showing my reaction when the guy I live with came up with the title for today’s post.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Oh, perhaps I should not have stopped to read or like this one. I would be sad to lose a distinctive yucca, even from a bad situation. (All of my Yucca can be relocated.) What species was it? I can not identify it from its foliage.
The guy I live with said it was some kind of hybrid yucca.
Well, I probably would not recognize it then anyway. Although, some of the species that I know are supposedly naturally occurring hybrids, such as Yucca recurvifolia. I do not know what to believe about that one.
This wasn’t a natural hybrid, for sure, but something that occurred in a nursery. No big loss.
C’mon, Mani. That title is pretty clever.
I guess I’d have to agree.
Ugh, what a pain. At least the man you live with didn’t title your post Evel Knievel Weevils. 😉 If it’s any consolation, NW Denver hasn’t received any rain since last month beyond the paltry 17 drops the other day.
I think he kind of considered that, but it would have been too much.
The guy I live with is also very tired of it looking like it’s going to rain and then nothing happens.
The other day when it was really hot it rained here for about a minute. That was weird.
Wee think THE title iss purrfect Mani an Guy! Wee are sorry THE Yucca got them ‘evil Weevilss’. CATFISH! They are not nice bugss are they? An wee sorry it iss *hot* there an not much rain. Wee need rain two. Wee have had tempss innto THE 90’ss with Hue-midex makin it feel like 104 F deegreess. Plus smoke an haze from Western Wildfires not helpin air quality! It sure has been a ruff summer fore all of us!!! Take guud care deer frendss
**nose bopss** BellaDharma an ((hugss)) BellaSita Mum
Thanks. We had smoke one night that was really bad; the guy I live with said it was from fires in Arizona.
He also has a weather thing on this laptop where he can see all the fires in western Canada.
We had about twenty drops of rain again.
It’s the weevil grubs that do the most damage I think, and we’re not “supposed” to have them here, but they must have been in a nursery pot .
Funny thing, someone told the guy I live with he could open a can of pineapple slices, set it on its side in the garden, and that would attract the weevils so they could be trapped.
The guy I live with thinks that would attract every yellowjacket in the county instead.
YIKESS!! There are firess inn Ary-zona two? Wee so sorry Mani! THE firess inn West Canada are bringing smoke an haze to Ontario (province) where wee live! Iss hard to breethe! 20 rain dropss? CATFISH! That iss NOT enuff fore sure! Wee agree with Mistur Guy…Pineapple will bring alot more than “Evil Weevilss” to yore garden 😉
Yes, in Arizona, along the Grand Canyon, and also in western Colorado, which is generally drier than here, except in the mountains. Like Grand Junction averages about nine inches of precipitation a year.
The guy I live with said the “weather thing” on his laptop said “heavy rain in 42 minutes” but nothing happened, even though when you open the map it knows where we are.
Bummer about the yucca. Rotten evil weevils. Cast your stink-eye on them and send them away. Would love to send you some of our rain. Well over a foot in the month of July alone. Surprisingly even my drought tolerant plants seem to be enjoying the extra moisture after so many years of drought. I sympathize with the smoke. I’ll take cool and wet any day over hot and smokey.
The guy I live with said he’d been irked by having planted the yucca so close to the desert willow, but now that’s been resolved in a smelly way.
He also says that drought tolerant plants like as much water as most other plants, it’s just that they can tolerate dry conditions much better. Like say cactus; cactus can endure long periods of dry conditions but when they get a lot of water they just grow bigger.
There are a lot of dryland plants in the highway medium just to the north of us and they’re watered regularly and look great.
He said he may even start watering the front garden because the plants would be happier.
The smoke is no fun, but fortunately we don’t have it every day.
Mee thinkss wee gotted yore ‘heavy rain’ tonite Mani an Guy!! It just poured for 1/2 hour…..sorry…..wee tried to send it to youss’!
No rain here at all. Sigh.
FISH STICKSS! Wee were hopin youss’ got sum rain Mani!
No, and none in the forecast for at least a week, maybe longer.
NOOOOOO!! Youss’ need rain so bad! Wee purray Forecasterss are wrong!
They seem to be often wrong in that they say a chance of rain when there’s really none.