I’ve been short a few iambs here at the Cafe lately, but this week should catch me up. The “Island Time”-themed 2009 edition of the ASLE biannual conference is underway in Victoria, running until Saturday. Much to say about much of interest, but as it’s late with an early start, I’ll just report that I enjoyed my reading this morning with three excellent south-of-the-border poets: William Kupinse, Lucille Lang Day (who’s also written a jell-o poem!) and Gyorgyi Voros. Our session was called Poems on Ecological Themes: Science, Technology, Food, and Ferment and we had a pretty good audience, particularly considering it was the first slot on the first day of the conference. We covered a lot of poetic ground between us, including science, sustainability and atom bombs, with gravy on top.

I am about to declare this the international year of creep. I have been spending hours standing on a ladder pulling tent caterpillars off my apple tree, wisteria, house etc., not to mention the scores of them I have trampled underfoot, and the slugs I have been drowning and the cutworms I have been stomping, Maybe, lacking vegetables to protect, I just never noticed many of these critters before. However, this is the first year my poor and well-pollinated apple tree has been tented and I am struggling to save what I can.

Not reassured to read this message about these guys, who are northern tent caterpillars:

It is important to realize that, no matter what steps are taken to control tent caterpillars on individual trees, that the overall populations will increase over several years and then drop to low levels naturally as diseases and predators catch up with the population.

This winter I will look out for the larvae, though, to see if I can slow them down next year (though I read they can stick around for up to 6 years!), or at least divert them away from my favourite tree.

The egg masses look like 1-2 cm long masses of hard brown foam, usually wrapped around branches less than 1 cm in diameter.

Oh well. Here’s a recipe for slug bait, in case you share my reluctance to feed them good beer (apparently they like fresh beer every day) (cheap grape juice is supposed to work too) :

1 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4-1/2 teaspoon yeast
(I have also heard you can add 2 tbsp flour as well)

One site suggested leaving twigs in your containers to allow beetles to climb out. My slugs loved this home brew very much. Too much. (I will spare you photos of where greed gets a gastropod…)

Perfect weather, perfect venue yesterday for the Island Chefs Collaborative festival, Defending our Backyard. They were expecting around 1000 people who, once their arms had been stamped with a tater stamp

would be turned loose with a wine glass and eating board

to graze and sip the afternoon away.

Lots of preparation…

There was a good selection of foods to buy as well, in the farmers’ market section

Decorative cob ovens, from Earth Institute:

Young gelato eater.

Lots of lineups for food…

but music to keep all entertained while they waited…

Slow Food wuz here:

A day both educational

and cute (3 weeks old).