For those who have followed me for a while you might recall that the year before my cherry tree up and dyed everything including the fruit started smelling like Cheddar Cheese.
I just sat down after having spent a good part of my day into evening trimming back and disposing branches from my 35-foot row of 100+ year-old lilac trees. Am picking those 'watermelon-like seeds' from my hair as I type (well, kinda). Anyway, Northern Minnesota here, and my lilac trees as well as my neighbor's got hit by some nefarious slow kill chemical concoction from above sometime back in early August. It's like whatever it was the effers sprayed just sucked every drop of moisture from the foliage. Another neighbor and I were talking earlier, wondering where all the songbirds are; have only seen one late-summer robin return where she told me she has seen two. Otherwise, my apple trees are doing alright: no cheesy or toe fungus smell, lol. My kids call me "shark-nose," so come harvest time I will be sure to sniff. Anyway, thanks so much for an interesting read, Patrick Jordan!
THIRTY FIVE FEET of relatives of the Olive species. Ours are in their late 80s.
Are you close to farmland? Or do you think it was chemtrails?
Now that you mention it the birds have been absent. Only within the past few days have I heard a bluejay.
Are these chemicals selective to genus and family such as the difference between apples and lilacs? The apple tree is as old as the lilacs otherwise I would suspect that they are wiping out legacy lifeforms.
When do your apples come in?
Mine have been falling off the tree ripe and unripe, but I remember many seasons where a red delicious didn't come into its own unless there was a cold snap.
My lilac bush has curled leaves. I can't see any bugs on the back of the leaf.
Expert Response
Your lilac leaves' symptoms (cupping, distortion) suggest that they've been exposed to some airborne 2,4-D herbicide. There are many herbicide products that contain 2,4-D.
It's likely that someone in your neighborhood has used 2,4-D herbicide to kill weeds in their lawn. If sprayed on a hot day, 2,4-D can volatilize (become a gas) and drift, often for several hundred yards.
Lilacs are pretty sensitive to 2,4-D drift, as are other trees/shrubs like redbud, hackberry, catalpa, aspen, linden, green ash, Amur maple and boxelder. Other very sensitive plants include grape and tomato.
Usually, the amount of airborne 2,4-D that causes these symptoms is not lethal to the affected tree or shrub.
YES! I was smitten with the lilac trees back when I first bought my house some 30-years ago and was soon pleased to learn that they are indeed related to the 'o-live', 'i-love' tree. It's never even occurred to me, though, to offer up a lilac branch to fend off foes (such as the mayor and police) and or shitty neighbors of the drug-trafficking type, of which the mayor and chief (of police) seem suspiciously, umm, let's just say 'closely affiliated'. When I first noticed the wilting foliage I immediately figured there had been some dousing from the skies, as opposed to, say, acid rain (essentially the same as chemspray – essentially just watered down fallout) or drifted roundup. However, none of my other trees and veggie and flower gardens were affected. So, yes, my guess is that the legacy lifeforms (as you so eloquently state), unlike the genetically altered 'aluminum resistant' hybrids, were left vulnerable and helpless.
My apples are a Dolgo Crab hybrid – 25-years old, with big 2"-plus sweet-tarty apples. I bit into one just the other day; it was tasty but no cold snap frost yet so still not quite ready for harvest and canning. Maybe next week when early morning temps begin to dip into the 30s and 40s.
Anyway, thank you for your responses! Judging by the overall health of my Summer of 2024 Defoliated Lilac Trees, Compliments of the u.s. gov and its lessor affiliates, I do believe they survived and that I will see more blooms in the many more Springtimes to come! If similarly assaulted come August 2025, I promise to have words with the maniacal dirtbags involved. Lol, if not retaliation then certainly some recompense – Eh?!
When I have to thin deadwood in the bushes I like to burn it because it has a very unique odor.
When my chemical allergies were at their worst I could not tolerate the smell of lilacs. They made me instantly and powerfully ill. After I cleaned my liver it ceased being bad, and only these last two years did I understand why my mother liked the smell.
I tried growing a Grannie Smith. The tree died. When I was looking into why it died I found out that the ONLY way to get the famous mouth-cringing tartness of the permanently green goblins is to have a crab apple in the same yard. That's how the real Grannie Smith of Oz did it.
Today I can eat a half a back of pathetic little golf balls and not even get a tang out of them. Back in the 1960s you couldn't finish a caramel apple with a grannie inside because it would give you lock-jaw.
Along with my lilacs the lilly of the valley beneath them took a massive hit. Yellow leaves with brown streaks.
These freaks need to be served cocktails of their potions on the rocks.
I worked in a semiconductor plant where there were chlorine, boron trifluoride, and selenium gas sensor/alarms.
The last two you won't survive so there's no point for the alarm - wouldn't make a difference.
The chlorine has an escape threshold.
If I smelled chlorine I would tell the fab-workers that I there was a leak. But people would look at the alarms and like all mouth-breathers they would say: "We don't smell anything." Then like a sit-com cue the alarms would go off and everyone would run out of the fab.
In each case it was maintenance putting bleach in the cooling tanks for the air handlers to control algae, then the smell got into the clean room.
They called me The Canary after those incidences and never questioned after that.
In the past ten years I had to test water for chlorine residue where the test strips were sensitive below what we're accustomed to hearing in PPB, so the threshold is in parts per trillion. I could detect the chlorine by smell that was confirmed by test strips at PPT.
These 'gifts' are from a lifetime of chemical allergy where it is a survival trait to be able to sense danger before it causes harm. It's like a blind person that relies on other senses to protect them.
Poor sense of smell can be from bad sinuses or mineral deficiency.
And some people can not understand how they make oxalate in their liver and is not just from eaten vegetables and fruits. It is because the fungus on plants (aspergillus) gets into the liver where it combines with Vitamin C ascorbic acid to make Oxalate crystals while you sleep. Oxalates are mostly endogenous not from external sources. For those who don't know what oxalates are - think kidney stones but everywhere.
You might be better off excavating your food from the local landfill. Maybe a 24 year old McDonald's burger and flies is the safer and more nutritious choice!
It's early spring here and we hardly got any blossoms on our extensive orchard, and no blossoms formed into fruit.
There was a strange delay between massive blossoms and fruit set here when the pharmwhores were delayed in their poison spraying due to constant rain. I know that pollinators don't like to do their migrant labor in the rain, but I've never seen such a lag between blossoms and fruit set. When the fruit did set it was the biggest crop I've ever seen. When the chemicals came back then the fruit drop happened but not to a level that affected the bumper crop.
My quince didn't show any fruit set at all but recently I found two soft-ball sized yellow quince with rotten bottoms laying at the bottom of the tree. I don't know how something like that was no visible from the ground while growing.
The Army Field Manual from the 1930s says that if you enter an area but don't hear bird song or insects to enter with caution. If you see them dead on the ground DO NOT ENTER.
Several years ago Spring was unseasonably warm the trees budded flowered, then the bastards hit the FREEZE button, it reset the counter to zero and then within 2 days it was back to abnormal.
Our plums gave us the biggest bumper crop of their lives right before they died too the next year.
that's sad to hear.
I just sat down after having spent a good part of my day into evening trimming back and disposing branches from my 35-foot row of 100+ year-old lilac trees. Am picking those 'watermelon-like seeds' from my hair as I type (well, kinda). Anyway, Northern Minnesota here, and my lilac trees as well as my neighbor's got hit by some nefarious slow kill chemical concoction from above sometime back in early August. It's like whatever it was the effers sprayed just sucked every drop of moisture from the foliage. Another neighbor and I were talking earlier, wondering where all the songbirds are; have only seen one late-summer robin return where she told me she has seen two. Otherwise, my apple trees are doing alright: no cheesy or toe fungus smell, lol. My kids call me "shark-nose," so come harvest time I will be sure to sniff. Anyway, thanks so much for an interesting read, Patrick Jordan!
Holy Apple Jacks!
THIRTY FIVE FEET of relatives of the Olive species. Ours are in their late 80s.
Are you close to farmland? Or do you think it was chemtrails?
Now that you mention it the birds have been absent. Only within the past few days have I heard a bluejay.
Are these chemicals selective to genus and family such as the difference between apples and lilacs? The apple tree is as old as the lilacs otherwise I would suspect that they are wiping out legacy lifeforms.
When do your apples come in?
Mine have been falling off the tree ripe and unripe, but I remember many seasons where a red delicious didn't come into its own unless there was a cold snap.
No cold and no snap.
Keep us posted.
Unhappy Lilac Bush #316244
Asked April 25, 2016, 2:46 PM EDT
My lilac bush has curled leaves. I can't see any bugs on the back of the leaf.
Expert Response
Your lilac leaves' symptoms (cupping, distortion) suggest that they've been exposed to some airborne 2,4-D herbicide. There are many herbicide products that contain 2,4-D.
It's likely that someone in your neighborhood has used 2,4-D herbicide to kill weeds in their lawn. If sprayed on a hot day, 2,4-D can volatilize (become a gas) and drift, often for several hundred yards.
Lilacs are pretty sensitive to 2,4-D drift, as are other trees/shrubs like redbud, hackberry, catalpa, aspen, linden, green ash, Amur maple and boxelder. Other very sensitive plants include grape and tomato.
Usually, the amount of airborne 2,4-D that causes these symptoms is not lethal to the affected tree or shrub.
======================================
Yeah... tell that to the Shrubbery.
YES! I was smitten with the lilac trees back when I first bought my house some 30-years ago and was soon pleased to learn that they are indeed related to the 'o-live', 'i-love' tree. It's never even occurred to me, though, to offer up a lilac branch to fend off foes (such as the mayor and police) and or shitty neighbors of the drug-trafficking type, of which the mayor and chief (of police) seem suspiciously, umm, let's just say 'closely affiliated'. When I first noticed the wilting foliage I immediately figured there had been some dousing from the skies, as opposed to, say, acid rain (essentially the same as chemspray – essentially just watered down fallout) or drifted roundup. However, none of my other trees and veggie and flower gardens were affected. So, yes, my guess is that the legacy lifeforms (as you so eloquently state), unlike the genetically altered 'aluminum resistant' hybrids, were left vulnerable and helpless.
My apples are a Dolgo Crab hybrid – 25-years old, with big 2"-plus sweet-tarty apples. I bit into one just the other day; it was tasty but no cold snap frost yet so still not quite ready for harvest and canning. Maybe next week when early morning temps begin to dip into the 30s and 40s.
Anyway, thank you for your responses! Judging by the overall health of my Summer of 2024 Defoliated Lilac Trees, Compliments of the u.s. gov and its lessor affiliates, I do believe they survived and that I will see more blooms in the many more Springtimes to come! If similarly assaulted come August 2025, I promise to have words with the maniacal dirtbags involved. Lol, if not retaliation then certainly some recompense – Eh?!
When I have to thin deadwood in the bushes I like to burn it because it has a very unique odor.
When my chemical allergies were at their worst I could not tolerate the smell of lilacs. They made me instantly and powerfully ill. After I cleaned my liver it ceased being bad, and only these last two years did I understand why my mother liked the smell.
I tried growing a Grannie Smith. The tree died. When I was looking into why it died I found out that the ONLY way to get the famous mouth-cringing tartness of the permanently green goblins is to have a crab apple in the same yard. That's how the real Grannie Smith of Oz did it.
Today I can eat a half a back of pathetic little golf balls and not even get a tang out of them. Back in the 1960s you couldn't finish a caramel apple with a grannie inside because it would give you lock-jaw.
Along with my lilacs the lilly of the valley beneath them took a massive hit. Yellow leaves with brown streaks.
These freaks need to be served cocktails of their potions on the rocks.
You can smell parts per trillion? Wow? Is that even possible?
You sure you are not part bloodhound?
My sense of smell is very poor.
I worked in a semiconductor plant where there were chlorine, boron trifluoride, and selenium gas sensor/alarms.
The last two you won't survive so there's no point for the alarm - wouldn't make a difference.
The chlorine has an escape threshold.
If I smelled chlorine I would tell the fab-workers that I there was a leak. But people would look at the alarms and like all mouth-breathers they would say: "We don't smell anything." Then like a sit-com cue the alarms would go off and everyone would run out of the fab.
In each case it was maintenance putting bleach in the cooling tanks for the air handlers to control algae, then the smell got into the clean room.
They called me The Canary after those incidences and never questioned after that.
In the past ten years I had to test water for chlorine residue where the test strips were sensitive below what we're accustomed to hearing in PPB, so the threshold is in parts per trillion. I could detect the chlorine by smell that was confirmed by test strips at PPT.
These 'gifts' are from a lifetime of chemical allergy where it is a survival trait to be able to sense danger before it causes harm. It's like a blind person that relies on other senses to protect them.
Poor sense of smell can be from bad sinuses or mineral deficiency.
And some people can not understand how they make oxalate in their liver and is not just from eaten vegetables and fruits. It is because the fungus on plants (aspergillus) gets into the liver where it combines with Vitamin C ascorbic acid to make Oxalate crystals while you sleep. Oxalates are mostly endogenous not from external sources. For those who don't know what oxalates are - think kidney stones but everywhere.
Theres a guru named Sandman who once said: "NOTHING occurs in ISOLATION."
Makes perfect sense that Fungus would be part of the overall picture.
You might be better off excavating your food from the local landfill. Maybe a 24 year old McDonald's burger and flies is the safer and more nutritious choice!
It's early spring here and we hardly got any blossoms on our extensive orchard, and no blossoms formed into fruit.
I can Count the the insects sesame Street style.
that's just damned scary my friend!
There was a strange delay between massive blossoms and fruit set here when the pharmwhores were delayed in their poison spraying due to constant rain. I know that pollinators don't like to do their migrant labor in the rain, but I've never seen such a lag between blossoms and fruit set. When the fruit did set it was the biggest crop I've ever seen. When the chemicals came back then the fruit drop happened but not to a level that affected the bumper crop.
My quince didn't show any fruit set at all but recently I found two soft-ball sized yellow quince with rotten bottoms laying at the bottom of the tree. I don't know how something like that was no visible from the ground while growing.
The Army Field Manual from the 1930s says that if you enter an area but don't hear bird song or insects to enter with caution. If you see them dead on the ground DO NOT ENTER.
We are entering the DO NOT ENTER Stage.
Time to X it?
We are being X it teddied quite agro cult roe
lee.
We had a bum per crop last year too, butt thanks to the unseasonal high summer rains, the fruit didn't ripen and rotted on the trees.
No Pie indeed!
They mix it up which is a strategy of wharf air.
Several years ago Spring was unseasonably warm the trees budded flowered, then the bastards hit the FREEZE button, it reset the counter to zero and then within 2 days it was back to abnormal.