I’m surprised that no one has watched me puttering around my garden and front yard lately and called the police or social services. I’m looking a little wild these days, but it’s not my fault.
The mosquitoes have been so bad for the last few weeks that I can’t pause for a microsecond or they nail me. I literally have mosquito bites on my mosquito bites. I wear a large men’s button-down shirt to protect my arms from bugs and the sun, so I already look disheveled, but lately I’ve swatted so many mosquitoes on it that I look like I just finished a shift in the emergency room.
My hair sticks up in all directions from all the swatting and the attempts to pull mosquito bits off my head after thwacking them with my palm. The other night I came in from watering and went into the bathroom to wash up. I looked in the mirror and there on my cheek was a perfect cartoon splat of a mosquito stuck to my face in dried blood. It was a lovely site. I’m glad none of the neighbors stopped to talk to me that evening.
I sometimes appear to be talking to myself as I swing and swat along in my oversized shirt and crazy hair (with my artful mosquito cheek), but usually I’m talking to my extensive baby rabbit collection that gives me a heart attack every time I’m pulling weeds or watering. There seems to be one about every 10 feet. You’d think I’d be used to them by now, but they always make me jump.
If you’re wondering why the seemingly unstable lady is shaking all her daylily scapes and talking into the flowers, it’s because the neighbor’s honeybees can’t get it into their heads that daylilies have stamens that protrude OUTSIDE of the blooms. The bees fly right past the stamens and dive into the throat of the flower looking for pollen. Then they get stuck on the slippery petals and make a horrible buzzing sound as they try to free themselves.
Some of them really get frantic, but one shake of the scape and they’re on their way. I’ve never seen this problem before, but just about every time I go outside there’s a honeybee to free:
To add a flourish to all my odd behavior, the plucking and stomping you see is me welcoming the Japanese Beetles to my yard. You’d think all the dead carcasses in the lawn would deter the new ones that fly in daily, but they are undeterred by my murderous ways.
I used to handle them only while wearing latex gloves, but now I can scoop up a dozen into my bare hand and close it without shrieking. The squirming of their little claws feels a freaky, but you get used to it. Then I fling them at the grass (if you don’t do it hard enough they bounce and then fly away) and crush them with a stomp of my size 11 shoe. If it seems like a violent reaction to a puny insect, you’ve never witnessed the plant damage just a few of these beasts can accomplish in a matter of hours.
With all my garden eccentricities, people may be inclined to take one look at me and walk briskly in the other direction, but I have one stalwart supporter…the neighbor’s cat.
It probably doesn’t hurt that I know which itches need immediate scratching.