Yard Work

Along with getting the inside of the house organized, we've been discovering a little about SC yard maintenance. We've traded slugs and crane flies for fireants; this yard is full of them! It was also full of leaves - after raking 40 bags of leaves from the yard, we headed to the local Lowes store for advice about fireants. After a long discussion about the seven levels to the queen and the proper way to spread pesticide (everywhere!), we headed out, armed with Over'N Out! (a pesticide for fireants) Take THAT fire ants! If you're interested, here's an excerpt from fireant.net website:

The red fire ant was accidentally introduced into the United States in 1929, when a cargo ship that had used soil as ballast arrived in Mobile, Alabama from South America. (Thanks a lot!) But South Americans don't have nearly the problem that the United States does. They only have 20% as many fireants as we do, probably because North America lacks the natural enemies of the pesky critters.

These guys are aggressive! They initially spread throughout Alabama and Florida, but it didn't take them long to invade twelve of our southeastern states and Puerto Rico. In recent years, the fireant has spread as far west as California and as far north as Kansas and Maryland. Although fireants keep marching farther and farther, northerners don't have to loose sleep over it because researches predict that they will not be able to survive in areas where soil temperatures drop to near freezing for more than 2 to 3 weeks.

With the cold weather in the Pacific Northwest, you shouldn't have to worry!

Fire ants safely under control, we'll be working on pruning and moving palm trees this weekend- hopefully we won't kill them in the process. I'll keep you posted.