greg mosser

pretty sure those are the dead stems from previous actual fruit. i’ve got a few too but they were there over the winter.

the original post mentioned sucking nectar off a catalpa flower - my little one is getting quite a mental list of all the flowers you can suck nectar from - honeysuckle, red clover, dead nettle…

also just getting down on the ground and watching the immediate insect show.

one of several dumb things i’ve done with a machete (for the record, lessons were very much learned each time) left my dominant hand heavily bandaged while i was living alone out of the country.

the letter i sent to my folks, describing the incident, was an amazingly messy but still somehow legible masterpiece listing the benefits and shortcomings of the socialized-medicine experience i had just had. it might have also qualified as a dumb thing that i decided to join a small group doing a several-mile-through caving expedition the next day.

hi larry, sorry if i wasn’t clear. on the most affected branches, those dead leaves are covering that area of bark where the tree goes from living to dead. those are the parts that are going to be most diagnostic. now that the leaves are gone would be a great time to take another pic.

failing that, i suspect fireblight, which will require relatively drastic cuts to contain -  which is why the more information we can get, the better for you and for your tree.

can we get a close-up of some of the affected branches? hard to diagnose anything when standing back from the tree. possibilities include fireblight, boring insects, and more.

nope, gone fully into ‘dead’ phase!

looks like a hornworm that’s been hollowed out by beneficial wasp larvae. it is fuzzy, but you can see the ‘horn’ near the top.

you can make a sort of dough or paste by mixing water with the powdered part, and the chicks will happily eat that too. just not too much at a time because it will mold in a day.

tea cakes, some cheese, some cured meat, a bit of fruit….

i get the impression they like a good ‘spread’.

they’re chubby little caterpillars if you go looking for them.