The Dreaded Locusts

Ugh! The dreaded locusts! No, not the kind that plagued Pharaoh in Exodus, but the trees. I have four honey locust trees in my yard and I DESPISE them with every fiber of my being. They are the bane of my very existence! For starters, these trees are covered in thorns. These thorns can get up to 6-8 inches long and are just like nails. They puncture my riding mower tires rendering it useless most of the time due to flat tires. It's a real pain getting the tires off and getting them plugged and patched. These wretched trees are also constantly dumping debris in my swimming pool and on my deck. All trees are "dirty", but it seems locust trees drop more crud than an average tree. This time of year is particularly troublesome. Locust trees drop tiny buds by the thousands. They are about half the size of a kernel of popcorn. For about a week each year it truly looks like it's snowing in my back yard. These buds clog and choke my pool skimmer for a week every May. I can't even run it while I'm at work. I don't like turning it off, but I have to. Yesterday when I returned home from work I turned the filter/pump on and starting scooping locust buds off the surface of the pool. Within ten minutes the skimmer basket was full and my pump was starving to get any water at all. This is bad because pool filters and pumps NEED water to operate. I repeated this process three times before I finally got most of the buds out of the water. I will probably be doing the same thing for the whole weekend. Sometime early next week all the buds will have fallen and I won't have to deal with them for another year.

If I had three wishes, my first one would be to remove the tree closest to my pool. My second wish would be to remove the tree next closest to my pool. My third wish would be to remove the tree third closest to my pool. In all seriousness, I would love to get rid of these nasty old trees, but they are MUCH too large to take down myself. Having them removed by a tree service is really expensive and not in the budget right now. For the time being I will continue to scoop these buds out of the pool manually. Oh the joys of owning a pool!

These are not my trees, but you get the idea.