June 6, 2009 I was out by the pool and looked over at our blue juniper. I noticed what looked like hundreds of small pine cones on it - and they were ?moving? So I went over to look at them a bit closer and realized they were NOT pinecones - but some disgusting worm inside what looked to be a combination cocoon/pinecone. I freaked! Went inside and Googled - found out they are BAGWORMS! OK - by now I am like REALLY freaking out. I read that they spread rapidly - can kill a shrub or tree in just a few weeks. I also read that the best way to get them off is to - pull them off. Well I was so NOT about to touch those thing. GROSS! So I called Ian (hubster). Told him what I found, what I read and he said he would stop at home depot on his way home from work and talk to someone in the garden center.

OK - he gets home - we head out to the backyard and start snipping these things off with a pruning sheer. Emily is catching them in a bucket and carrying them over to the fire pit to burn them - which she is strangely taking great delight in.

There was no way we could get them all off - there were HUNDREDS of the things all over the juniper.

Ian told me the guy at home depot told him we didn't have to get them off. We could just use this one kind of pesticide on the ground - to "water" the juniper with. It would absorb the poison through the roots making the needles the worms were feeding on poisonous. Then he also had another bottle of stuff to attach a hose to and spray the juniper and surrounding plants with. This was supposed to kill them.

I really hope it works. When we put the pool in not quite 4 years ago we spent thousands of dollars on the landscaping. It would be devestating if these disgusting creatures killed all of it.

I am still shivering and itching just thinking about them.