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The Mad Dash

May 7th, 2018

Here in Maine, we have black fly season. It’s annoying. Black flies buzz in your ears and bite, hard. Typically, the season goes from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. We wear head nets during the season if there’s no breeze, but we try to spend LONG days in the garden before they arrive to get as much done as possible before the little buggers hatch out.

I often take a lot of days off work this time of year, or I work in the evenings when it’s dark. These past two weeks have been no different. Any day it’s nice, I’m outside working, unless there’s something pressing I need to get finished. Naturally, I always have furry helpers when I’m working outside.

This weekend, I accomplished a ton in the garden. All brassicas, lettuce, celery and beets were transplanted. Peas were seeding, shrubs were pruned, perennials were transplanted, perennials borders were weeded and a layer of mulch was applied.


I also started working on a rock wall around part of the old apple tree up front. It’s really starting to look GREAT! On Saturday evening, after a long day of working in the garden, a black fly buzzed my ear. Even though I’ll still be out working in the garden, I won’t be out quite so much.

What insects are annoying you this week in the garden?

3 Comments to “The Mad Dash”
  1. kristin @ going country on May 7, 2018 at 9:30 am

    Ugh. Black flies–and deer flies and mosquitoes and all the rest–are one of the reasons we’re leaving the north. So awful after such a long winter to be driven back inside. We have the added fun of having to be on baseball fields during the bug season, as baseball season runs concurrently with bug season. There’s no escaping them.

    I expect them any day now. Dun dun DUN.

    Reply to kristin @ going country's comment

  2. Nebraska Dave on May 8, 2018 at 8:51 am

    Susy, I think because it was so cold over the Winter and now a very dry Spring the bug population has taken a major hit here in Nebraska. There are no bugs out yet. Mosquitoes are the most bothersome during the summer evenings. Fortunately, I must not smell good to them and they don’t bother me much. I’ve heard that mosquitoes like certain blood types and mine must not be one of them.

    Does the blue cup not work all that well? It seems to work fairly well when you tried it the first time.

    Have a great black fly free garden day.

    Nebraska Dave

    Reply to Nebraska Dave's comment

  3. Misti on May 8, 2018 at 2:44 pm

    Mosquitoes are starting to be troublesome again. We get horse flies here during certain times of year but certainly not like what y’all get up there! I do remember how horrible the flies were in Vermont when we hiked through—they tapered down by the time we arrived in Maine via the AT.

    Reply to Misti's comment

About

This is a daily journal of my efforts to cultivate a more simple life, through local eating, gardening and so many other things. We used to live in a small suburban neighborhood Ohio but moved to 153 acres in Liberty, Maine in 2012.

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