Up until early last week the garden was thriving, everything looked bright, colourful and contented. Today it's a somewhat different story. The garden looks exhausted, as though it has already reached the end of summer and is languishing from overwork. As though it can hardly wait for late fall when everything can be tucked away awaiting winter.

The ligularia in the backyard looks as though it has crept back into the soil; it's miserably ragged-looking, on the cusp of perishing, what had always been a large, showy, healthy plant. The monarda, freshly blooming, don't look too miserable, yet, but the Stella d'Oro and day lilies are in droop mood as is the calla lily with its deep magenta-pink vase-like blooms.

It's the heat, the unrelieved heat. What it does to us it does as well to the gardens and all growing things when there's no break in the unabated heat that has been baking the environment. The disgusting fat-white grubs, progeny of those beautiful and destructive Japanese beetles are preparing to invade the garden as soon as the grubs mature and begin to fly as adult beetles, having already devastated the lawn, eaten the grass roots to their ravenous hearts' content.

It's only a matter of time before they settle in hungry hordes on the ornamental spiral-branched Corkscrew hazel tree and begin munching endlessly on the foliage, leaving devastation behind. And the roses, we've got roses at the front and back of the house, all kinds of roses and it seems those beetles are quite particular about gustatory treats and our roses are their treats.

Our lawn is a project without end. My husband has spent countless hours babying the grass, fertilizing it regularly, mowing it just so, not too short not too long, in the spring putting down fresh composted garden soil and sprinkling it with grass seed. He's done this with a passion ever since the beetles arrived about three-four years ago. And they certainly appreciate his efforts. Waiting for grass seed to take, watering it zealously equals taking good care of the Japanese beetles; they love the grass roots and adore being watered.

For some reason these garden pests think of our garden in particular as their private playground, and overlook opportunities elsewhere. We'd originally seen them years ago in a hollow crook of a tree in the nearby forest, thought how beautiful they were and  how odd it was that such a writhing, densely packed group of insects was doing something -- we had no idea what, back then; destroying vegetation -- in the woods.