LEARNING TO LIVE WITH THE INHABITANTS OF THE MARSH

by Bill George

If any of you have read more than one or two articles written by me you already know that Sue and I reside in South Lyon. Yep, we abandoned the hub-bub city life with its honking horns and all night street lights for the more serene life to commune with nature. This included being quietly lulled to sleep in the evenings by the croaking of the frogs in our own marsh. Nobody bothered to tell us that what those frogs were croaking about was that they were so happy they had found, "Mosquito Heaven". The first year we moved here I cut in one of my new rose gardens that bordered just on the edge of Cat Tail City. In the late afternoon I would be working in my garden and there would be a low hum out in the marsh and as the sun dipped lower in the sky, the hum would draw nearer and finally mosquitoes would start to feed on anything warm blooded in the near vicinity (mainly me!). If I was weeding, it would be pull one weed and slap at one bug that was doing aerial maneuvers somewhere around my ears while ten of his brothers were making me the main course for dinner. This was no way to properly attend ones rose garden as one certainly did not have time to do garden maintenance while one was waving his arms wildly about or slapping oneself silly. Something definitely needed to be done to rectify the situation.

Since those early days of conflict with the blood sucking population of the marsh I have found a product that keeps them in their place and away from MY place.

The product is a concentrated > > garlic oil produced by a company out in California. > > For more information please contact Ray Meesseman at > > 877-848-7600.

The product is a concentrated garlic oil produced by a company out in California. For more information please contact Ray Meesseman at 877-848-7600. Three or four years ago you may have seen an article in the Detroit News about it. Of course there's the proverbial good news and bad news aspect about it. The bad news is, it costs about $100 per gallon of concentrated solution. The good news is that I can split a gallon three ways with friends and have enough to get me through the whole summer for my 3/4 acre of yard disregarding the house of course. So when I say it is concentrated, I'm just not whistling, "Dixie". I mix it at a rate of 1:100 with water which is about 4 ounces to 3 gallons which I can spray my entire lawn and it will last almost a month depending on how much rain we get. This is not a poison but a natural deterrent. It does not kill them but merely keeps them away from me and mine which makes me very happy. Ya know, I'm a kind of,

"live and let live", type of guy. In order for this to be most effective you must apply only in the evening at dusk according to directions. I've found that applied any other time of day will decrease its effectiveness. You just mix it up and spray it from a tank sprayer lightly all over your yard. Once you've gotten by all the pasta jokes from your friends and neighbors you can sit back in the late afternoon and early evening and enjoy your yard outdoors with only a very few pesky mosquitoes to bother you. Consider this bonus, the manufacturer claims that it will repel a whole host of insects so I think it helps cut back the visiting pests to my rose gardens also.

Last summer I was lucky enough to keep the deer from making my roses a regular salad stop on their rounds during the night. I did three things that may have helped fend them off. 1.) I kept blood meal sprinkled around the perimeters of my gardens. 2.) I kept a solution of male urine applied around the same borders (I won't give you the mechanics of that application.)and 3.) I used the garlic spray on my lawn. Now I'm not saying which method worked most effectively in keeping the critters away. Who knows, maybe they all worked in unison, but something did the trick.

So what do we have here? We have an all natural insect repellent that seems to keep the mosquitoes at bay. It only needs to be applied every 3-4 weeks to our lawn during early evening hours and the smell of garlic dissipates over night. If you would like to test it on your own yard, the company does sell it in a quart container but in a less concentrated form. People ask me, how effective it really is. I tell them, with it I can work on my roses anytime of day. Without it, well, I am the most favored item on the menu for our little inhabitants of the marsh.

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