Public Service Announcement

We regret that the Gardening and Back-To-Nature moment must be interrupted...
by Nature.

Grrr...

Let me explain.

Little Sir and I have been happily puttering around our little garden, and trying to get the rest of the yard in shape, little by little. I'm always careful to take the necessary precautions, as is DH, to wear long pants, have socks pulled up over the pant legs, and spray us with Deep Woods Off, even all over the shoes. I am not messing around with ticks and all their little friends. (We have found about 10 so far this year, but none actually biting us.)

DH does the mowing and heavy stuff, Little Sir and I are exploring our garden. We've also done a little spring/summer cleaning, bringing out mattresses to be aired out and all that. Cleaning out the shed. Fun stuff, let me tell you. (The garbage men must really love us by now.)

Well, Saturday I found 3 ticks...one on a mattress I was bringing in (...unpleasant thought...), one crawling up the front door, and another on a shirt. One of these was a lone star tick (those are the bearers of Rocky Mt. spotted fever. I thought they didn't come this far north!)

Then, Sunday, Little Sir and I are out erranding and he says, "Ow Ow!"

"What's the matter?"

"Something's biting me!"

"Biting you where?"

"Inside my underwear!"

I quickly pulled over, told him to get out of the carseat, come up front, pulled down his pants. Yup. A deer tick. In a very sensitive area I was not about to attempt tweezers on.

Ok, gingerly pull back up the pants, leave the fly open on the shorts, gently get rebuckled into the carseat, and head for the emergency room..
That adventure went better than most of its kind, and we were on our way, with pages of instructions on follow-up.

I noticed today my left elbow has soreness I've never experienced before..for about 3 days, now. Might as well get a Lymes test for me too. Tried to do that today, got a nurse on the phone who argued with me, trying to tell me I just have a virus that's going around,blah blah blah. (Why do they have these posters up in the doctor's office about the symptoms of Lymes, etc., and to contact your dr. right away, if they're just gonna pooh-pooh you when you call?)

Anyway, today it was too beastly hot for DH to mow before his evening shift at work, so I decided to tackle it when I got home around 7:30 pm. Did the regular tick preventative measures, just like always. I took the recyclables to the street first, pulled some more stuff out of the shed to go out, and noticed a wasp buzzing around my head. Further investigation found a new nest just above the shed door. Very nice. Carefully inspected all around the perimeter of the house, and found a few more. Lovely. Made a mental note to deal with that tomorrow...suypposed to get thunderstorms again tonight. Don't want all that lovely poison to wash away.

Got the mower going (we have a new-to-us antique mower which needs a little coaxing), and busily roared along, semi-uneventfully...

And then I noticed it.

Creeping along the borders of the property where it wasn't before...and in a few places I did spot it last year and tried to hard to get rid of it...


poison ivy.


sigh.


Will we ever have a yard that's safe to play in?

p.s.
Oh, and, the house is over-run with ants, of various sizes, inside and out. Bought some special traps today, set them up tonight after everything else was done for the day. Then I noticed in fine print, "not effective against...carpenter ants..." Great. So I'm only killing 2 of the 3 kinds. How do I kill carpenters, short of an exterminator, which I can't afford right now, what with tick spraying and all.