Emerald Ash Borer's Come to Town

The emerald ash borer, a nasty invasive insect highly effective at killing ash trees, arrived in Minneapolis and St. Paul a few weeks ago. Above is one of the traps they're using to try to determine how far it's spread.

After Dutch elm disease killed off most of the elm trees in the city, they planted another monoculture, this time ash. Brilliant!

We don't have any ash on our property (anymore -- one rotted out and fell due to other reasons a couple of years ago), so we're not looking at any personal losses. But, they're very common in the neighborhood and all over the city.

We have one apple tree, one buckeye sapling a few years old (planted after the ash fell), and one catalpa sapling one year old. The neighbor has a great big maple which gives us some shade too.