Our Northern Illinois Orchard Pest Report (June 2024)

~ Kern Family ~ Leave a comment

For two years, our backyard orchard in Northern Illinois has fought aphids, Japanese beetles, leaf curl, rust-like spots, and other fungal damage. We have more than twenty fruit trees: apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, and plums, along with seasonal lemons and limes. We responded with copper, sulfur, neem oil, and direct removal of insects.

This is a dated field report from June 2024, not a universal spray program. Different crops, diseases, products, and stages of growth require different treatment. The product label has to govern the crop, concentration, timing, weather limits, protective equipment, and number of applications. Illinois Extension guidance should be checked before treating a disease in this region.

What We Tried

Copper fungicide: We used copper against fungal symptoms on apples and stone fruit. Our mistake was treating “copper every other week” as a general schedule. Copper can damage foliage, and the right timing depends on the tree, disease, and label. Future applications need to begin with a diagnosis and crop-specific instructions.

Neem oil: We used neem against aphids, beetles, and some fungal problems. It did not remove the need for manual pest control, and it should not be treated as harmless because it is sold as a natural product. We need to follow the label’s crop, temperature, pollinator, and application restrictions.

Sulfur fungicide: We initially mixed sulfur into the larger rotation. That was too casual. Sulfur and oil products can interact badly, so they should not be combined or scheduled close together unless the labels explicitly permit it. We now treat compatibility as a safety question, not an improvisation.

Application and Weather

We used a one-gallon manual pump sprayer and tried to cover the affected trees on dry weekends. Rain complicated the work, but “spray again after rain” is not a sufficient rule. Rainfastness and reapplication intervals belong to the specific product label.

We also learned that timing matters. By the time leaves show extensive damage, some disease-control windows may already have passed. Illinois Extension says peach leaf curl requires one dormant application after leaf drop or before buds swell; treatment after bud break is ineffective. Our earlier instruction to begin a general rotation as buds opened was wrong. We need to identify each disease and follow the label and crop-specific Extension guidance before the season begins.

Manual Pest Control

Japanese beetles still required hands-on removal. We knocked them into soapy water. Aphids could sometimes be brushed or rinsed from a small infestation, although any solution used on the plant still needs to be identified and checked for safety.

The useful lesson was not that one weekly rotation solved the orchard. It was that observation, early diagnosis, weather, labels, and manual control all matter. We saw some infections stop spreading and some trees recover, but visible improvement alone does not prove which spray caused it. The next season should begin with better identification and a separate plan for each crop.

Affirmation as a Closed-Loop Illusion

~ Kern Family ~ Leave a comment

Talk can feel like work. That is why it can become a closed-loop illusion.

You announce a goal. Friends praise the intention. A meeting produces a detailed plan. Everyone leaves encouraged. Nothing has been built, practiced, shipped, or finished, but the social reward arrives anyway.

The danger is not affirmation itself. Encouragement can strengthen a person who is doing difficult work. The danger is letting recognition for an intention stand in for the work that the intention was supposed to produce.

When the Signal Replaces the Result

This happens easily because talk produces real social consequences. A person who announces a marathon receives praise as an aspiring runner before completing the daily runs. A team that holds a planning meeting can feel coordinated before anyone owns the next action. The feeling is real. The competence is not yet there.

Research on goals makes the picture more careful than a slogan about dopamine. Implementation intentions can help when they connect a specific situation to a specific action. Research on self-regulation also asks whether attention to progress increases commitment or gives a premature sense of release. The effect depends on what the person does with the signal. A plan that governs action is useful. A plan that earns applause and then becomes a substitute for action is not.

Social media makes the substitution easy to repeat. The post about a new diet, project, or career move is public and measurable: it receives likes and comments. The private repetition required to become competent is slower and often invisible. A person can therefore keep producing signs of progress instead of progress itself.

Reality Gives Better Feedback

Physics, deadlines, and tangible results do not lie. The weight either moved or it did not. The code runs or it fails. The paper survives criticism or it does not. Reality returns information that affirmation cannot provide.

This is why competence grows through repeated contact with the task. Planning matters. Encouragement matters. Honest feedback matters. But each one must lead back to action. Otherwise the support system becomes a padded room in which intention is mistaken for achievement.

The practical discipline is modest. Speak about a goal only as much as the work requires. Turn plans into named next actions. Measure output rather than enthusiasm. Seek praise less often than correction. Let the result tell you what you can do.

John the Baptist’s willingness to decrease and Christ’s refusal of empty acclaim point toward the same moral posture: substance before appearance. Humility does not mean denying good work. It means refusing to claim the fruit before it grows.

Citations

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493-503. Available at APA PsycNet.

Fishbach, A., & Koo, M. (2014). The Dynamics of Self-Regulation: When Goals Commit Versus Liberate. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 50, 207-261. Available at ScienceDirect.

Why Our Family Prays the Liturgy of the Hours

~ Kern Family ~ Leave a comment

Why We Pray the Liturgy of the Hours

When we became Catholic, we fell in love with the Mass. It was plainly the center of the Church’s life. The harder question was what should anchor the rest of the day.

Before Catholicism, I was a pastor in evangelical churches. Prayer was usually spontaneous and often followed the devotional reading or sermon theme of the day. It was not bad prayer, but it had no common daily rhythm. The Liturgy of the Hours gave us one.

For our household, the Hours has proven better than the Rosary as the main form of daily prayer. That is not an argument against Mary or against repetition. It is a judgment about what most fully joins our ordinary day to the public worship of the Church.

What the Hours Gives Us

The Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office, is built around the Psalms prayed at set times. It also includes Scripture readings, hymns, intercessions, collects, and, in the Office of Readings, texts from the Fathers and saints. Clergy pray it as an obligation, religious communities pray it according to their rule, and lay Catholics are invited to take part.

That distinction matters. The Rosary is a private devotion, even when people pray it together. The Hours is liturgy: the official prayer of the Church. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer do not simply give us material for reflection. They place our morning and evening inside the Church’s calendar and common prayer.

The Hours is thoroughly biblical without being nothing but biblical text. Day after day it gives us the Psalms, canticles, readings, and the story of Christ across the liturgical year. The Rosary also contemplates Christ through its mysteries, often from Mary’s vantage point. Our preference for the Hours is therefore not a choice between Christ and Mary. It is a choice to make the Church’s public prayer the spine of our day.

How to Begin

Start with Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. The Church calls them the hinge hours because the daily office turns on them. Do not begin by trying to master the entire cycle.

We use the Divine Office app. It places the right texts in order and includes audio, which makes it possible to pray while commuting or folding laundry. A book can come later if you want one.

Then give the prayer a fixed place. Pray before the day scatters the household and again when it gathers. If a parish or group prays the Hours together, join them. If not, praying alone still joins you to the Church’s common act.

The Mass remains the source and summit of Christian life. The Liturgy of the Hours carries that worship through the days between one Mass and the next. That is why it has pride of place in our home.

What We Told Our Boys After a Shouting Match

~ Kern Family ~ Leave a comment

The Incident

One sunny afternoon, Luke, Levi, and their friend Adil were by the creek tossing sticks into the water. Our neighbor called across the creek and warned them that the sticks could dam the water and cause a flood. That would have been fine. Then her husband began screaming threats at the kids and my pregnant wife.

My wife yelled back and told him to stop. I heard the shouting from the house and came barreling into the backyard. I was furious. When the man turned toward me, I shouted over him and told him twice, “I don’t want to hear another word from you.” He turned around and left.

These neighbors had a history of drunken shouting and escalated confrontations. That history explains why we reacted so quickly. It does not mean every part of our reaction was wise.

What We Told the Boys

Once things calmed down, we gathered the boys. They were frightened and confused. We told them that anger can arise when someone threatens you or someone you love. Jesus Himself drove the merchants from the Temple. But anger cannot be allowed to master us.

We also told them that forgiveness and boundaries belong together. Jesus says in Matthew 5:44, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Forgiveness means refusing to nurse hatred. It does not require pretending that a dangerous person is safe.

Jesus remained silent before Herod. We took that as an example of refusing a pointless confrontation. In the same way, we can love a neighbor while keeping enough distance to protect our family. We do not have to keep returning to a volatile exchange to prove that we have forgiven someone.

Forgiveness Without Pretending

We have not yet gone back to smooth things over with the neighbors. For now, the honest lesson for the boys is that we must let go of resentment, pray for the people who wrong us, and keep prudent boundaries. It is also worth admitting that their parents lost their tempers. The boys did not need a performance of perfect calm. They needed us to name what happened truthfully.

We ended the day by praying the Our Father and asking for the grace to forgive those who wrong us. That was the lesson: forgive, tell the truth about danger, and do not let another person’s anger govern your own.