New York Renovator

I wondered what Livvy was staring at so intently on the front porch this evening. She often sits in the front entry, staring at the outside world of the two outside cats, Milo and Fuzzy. But she was staring a little more… intently… so I peeked out.

WHOA.

He arched his back when he saw me approach.

Little menace. I hollered and stomped my feet, and both raccoon and cat took off.

My daughter says we should Shoot Him, Skin Him, and Make Him Into a Hat. Maybe one of those groovy coon-skin personalized baseball bats, perhaps?? LOL, wow did that one work out well! LOLOL.

We do NOT want raccoons hanging around the house. There have been reports of coons with rabies in the area. *sigh* Another thing to deal with.

I’ve been hearing about this new “organic” pesticide, and wanted to check some out for myself. The gracious folks at Safer Brand gave me a free bottle of EndALL insect spray to try out. Summer is only just beginning here in Upstate New York, so I can’t say we are plagued with loads of pests (yet). But for the past few years, I have had problems with aphids, tent caterpillars, sawfly larvae, and cucumber beetles in my gardens. And spider mites are a real pain for the indoor plants. Sheesh! I don’t want to use pesticides because I’d rather not eat food tainted with toxins, thank you very much! But the bugs are sometimes overwhelming.

So we tried the EndALL Insect Killer spray on some nasty spider mites that had been infesting the houseplants. The EndALL worked very well– solved the mite problem and didn’t stink up the house with a nasty chemical smell. According to the label, EndALL will kill: Japanese Beetles, weevils, caterpillars, bagworm, aphids, leafhoppers, tent caterpillars (yes!) sawfly larva (YESSS!!), chinch bugs, sod webworm, armyworms, billbugs, lawn moths, box elder bugs, Asian lady beetles, gypsy moth larva, earwigs, whiteflies, and more. So far, SO GOOD! We’ve had a problem with the sawfly larva, especially– they devour my pine trees every year. :-p

Ugly things!

EndALL spray is suitable for flowers, fruit trees and bushes, vegetables, lawn, ornamental plants, and houseplants. Active ingredients are potassium salts of fatty acids, clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil, pyrethrins. Yeah, i couldn’t understand that, either. As long as it doesn’t say “dynamite” or “yellow cake uranium,” it looks good to me!

So if you’re looking for an organic solution to your pest problems, give EndALL a try. It’s mild enough to be pleasant and safe to use, but powerful enough to zap the nasty bugs!! Thanks to the folks at Safer Brand for sending me this terrific product! I’ll be making good use of it.

This is a sponsored post, brought to you by the folks at Safer Brand.

I’ve mentioned many, many times before that we have a deer problem here. Which is really weird, because I live in the busiest part of my small town, and I’m only a few miles away from a city. These deer eat EVERYTHING. I hate them, I do. They are eating machines on springy legs. If I could hit the backside of a barn (and was allowed to in town), I’d plug these critters full of lead and have them all for dinner.

OK OK I’m exaggerating!!!

I’d eat ONE of them for dinner. And give the rest away. Gah! These deer make me mad.

I was upstairs a few days ago, at dusk, and looked out the window. What did I see? These mangy varmints!

I counted TEN of them! The photos are poor, sorry. But can you see their evil, glittering eyes? They have intentions of eating everything I plant, they do! Then they leave their dainty little droppings alllll over my yard– the NERVE! First they chew up all my precious vegetation, then insult me by using my yard as their Toto toilet.

Unbelievable. I’m beyond upset. What the heck do I do?!

Rodents- BAH!

I don’t INTEND to feed them constantly. My goal is to feed the BIRDS. We’ve been enjoying all the birds coming to my yard, including some beautiful cardinals and chickadees!

But apparently, the squirrels have discovered the feast that is in my bird feeder. I filled up the feeder three days ago, and now it’s bone dry! Unbelievable! I thought perhaps we had an influx of hungry birds, but my son said, “Oh no; I saw the squirrels dumping seed all over the ground so they could get to it.”

From what I hear, squirrels are almost IMPOSSIBLE to deter from bird seed feeders. The only solution is to get a squirrel-proof feeder. *sigh*

Well, it’s a good thing I like Buy.com so muchand they always have stuff on sale. I spotted this nice feeder for $32 at Buy.com. It’s called the Heritage Farms Birds’ Choice Squirrel Proof Feeder! How’s that for a name. And it’s birds’ choice! lol. I like the old-fashioned green paint color. That would match my house and yard perfectly. It looks pretty high-tech! What do you think? Think it’ll be the birds’ choice? It had better not be squirrel’s choice! Next thing you know, I’ll have to get an air siren to scatter all the dang rodents and deer that are infiltrating my yard! SHEESH!

Now that the snow is melting, I can walk to the backyard to access the winter damage done by the deer and snowmobilers. :-p

My poor apple trees. My poor grape vine!! I could skin those varmints alive, I could.

My grapevine didn’t get it as bad as the apple trees. The busted post is from the Husband varmint. He accidentally backed into the garden fencing when working on the brakes, lol.

But my apples trees! ! Ever year I go out to access the damage, and every year it’s the same– the trees are half eaten by those STUPID DEER!!!!!!!!! I hate them, I do.

By the way, that goofy string on the limb is my hokey version of deer repellent. Well, it WAS deer repellent. Well, actually, I guess it wasn’t. It didn’t repel anything!!!! GAH!!! It was a bar of soap hanging from the string. The soap (so I heard) repels deer. MY deer are SO nasty that they even eat soap!!!

*cries*

I have to go high tech, I think. I can’t sit back and watch my beautiful trees chewed up and devoured by critters that deserve only to be made into stew. I hear coyotes repel deer! mauhahahhahaha!!!! But… coyotes repel ME, too. So…. next best thing is to get….

COYOTE WHIZ!!! Yes! Well, technically it’s called “Coyote Urea.” *adjusts glasses* I really don’t care WHAT the durn stuff is, as long as it makes those deer high-tail it outta my yard. Buy.com has some of this stuff on sale for under $15. It’s called Shake Away Coyote Urea, and one application is supposed to last up to 90 days. That’s better than anything else I’ve have ever seen.

So, I hope my problems will be solved… now I need to figure out how to repel the blasted snowmobilers that tear up my yard…

Have you been invaded by ladybugs lately? We have. Last week the temperatures were below freezing; but this week, it’s been very mild– near 70 degrees today! And all this week that the temps have raised, the ladybugs are EVERYWHERE. We had a swarm swirling around our back door and our living room window. A few dozen have sneaked in the house, somehow. Livvy finds them entertaining.

I guess we’re not alone. My fellow New Yorkers have been inundated with ladybugs, too. The bugs even made the nightly news!

Syracuse (WSYR-TV) – We’ve gotten calls and emails from many of you wondering what’s going on with an infestation of ladybugs and other types of beetles.

It’s the time of year for them to find shelter, but some years are worse than others, especially if the population had a strong summer.

Central New Yorkers join people from Illinois to Massachusetts in dealing with swarms of ladybugs, most of which are seeking the sunniest parts of people’s homes.

“Some of them will have lots of black dots and some of them will have almost no dots,” says Cornell Cooperative Extension entomologist Kim Adams.

But there are similar species who are also making their presence known, particularly the box elder bug.

Yeah, we’re also getting a lot of the chinch bugs here– and they are not anywhere as cute as the ladybug. They are actually pretty creepy; good thing they crawl slowly– I can squish them easier. I don’t squish the ladybugs, though. Ladybugs are good for the garden. I remember as a girl, my mother purchased some through a mail-order gardening catalog. After a few weeks waiting, a small box came in the mail. When she opened the box, billions of ladybugs emerged from the box and poured into the yard. What an experience– bugs in the mail! I’ll never forget that sight of the boxful of a red, squirming mass with gazillions of little black legs.

They’ll go away soon, once we no longer have any warm or sunny days.

But if you just can’t stand to wait, Adams recommends you use the vacuum cleaner to collect them, and then release them outside.

“I don’t recommend using any sort of pesticide in your home,” says Adams.

Ladybugs in particular will stain fabric if you crush them, but these insects are not endangered, so the choice is yours.

I don’t mind them. I won’t kill them. But they are INTENT on suicide missions, it seems. They divebomb for spots under our feet as we walk, or cuddle around the bases of light bulbs in the lamps only to be fried with a disconcerting ZZZZAPPP, or make their way into Livvy’s paws and mouth. Oh well.

They’re back.

Mama Deer brings her newborn babies to our gardens every year. *sigh* Deer are very cute, but they are eating machines on legs. They decimated my Rose of Sharon, Apple trees, Willow trees, well just about everything (!) a year ago. Their appetite is insatiable. An hour of no eating is like a day of austin weight loss for these non-stop-eating critters!

The Mama and other baby are skittish (but they still came near somewhat). One of the fawns is bold. He waltzed right over and licked our hands, munched from my tree, and found my son’s leftover luncheon crumbs on his pants. I managed to catch a brief video.

They ARE cute, but don’t be fooled for a second: they’ll eat you out of house and home in a DAY.

I’m hoping there’s a bug expert here amongst my readers. My daughter was out looking at our grapes on our grape vine, and saw this huge yellow beetle on the leaves. YUK!!! Does anyone know what beetle this is? Does it eat grapes??

The beetle is large, about 1.5 to 2 inches long. It flew away when my daughter drew closer to snap photos.

I hope it’s harmless. I have HAD IT with bugs and critters eating away all my plants. Between the woodchucks, deer, and rabbits, we also have had infestations of grubs, Japanese beetles, tent caterpillars, the European sawfly larva, black flies, and various other nasty bugs I can’t identify. Wow.

I thought we got rid of them all last year. I went out to my garden yesterday, to see how the weeds flowers and shrubs are growing, and spotted these nasty little devils on my Scotch pines again.

**sigh**

They are small right now; can you see them?

In case, you don’t remember or you weren’t a devoted fan last year and missed all the fun– we had an infestation of the sawfly caterpillar last year. It was quite a surprise one morning to walk to my garden and see more than half of my pine tree completely defoliated by these horrid, disgusting little creatures.

Click the photo and click “all sizes” for a huge, close-up photo of these ugly bugs. Have a barf bag nearby.

We had to hand-pick them off the trees. It took HOURS and was more laborious than sorting through travel insurance quotes. :-p

This is what a healthy pine branch looks like:

This is what a pine branch after the European sawfly looks like:

This is some of the damage these critters do:

They kill the pine. Destroying the needles basically suffocates and starves the tree. I have put a lot of time, money, and love into my plants and my gardens. I just cannot BELIEVE that a couple hundred bugs can destroy everything…. it’s always an uphill battle, isn’t it?! GRRR!

I only have 3 or 4 flowers blooming right now. But my garden beds are filling with weeds already. Isn’t it amazing how quickly those nasty weeds grow?! And our temperatures here have hardly broken 45 degrees and already the bugs and spiders are comng out of the woodwork. I’ve already seen flies, spiders, ticks, and ants! Unbelievable.

We have a massive ant problem here, inside and outside. We have carpenter ants in the house’s interiorr walls, smaller black ants and red ants in mounds outside, and the tiny little “grease ants” that have been streaming into my kitchen. Their arrivals seem a bit early this year, if you ask me. In the past, I’ve bought those little ant traps– they look like black plastic tents. I don’t think they’ve been terribly successful; the ants are either populating like mad or the ant bait traps are useless. I’ve been doing a bit of reading on getting rid of such pests, and came across several online articles about the effectiveness of borate, or boric acid.

Borate is not toxic to humans and animals (although it should still be avoided from touching, ingesting, and inhaling). But what this stuff does is it acts a stomach poison (not an appetite suppressant, but they ingest the borate and it kills them); and in some cases the borate pierces the insects’ exoskeleton, and dries the critter up. You can mix the borate with something like sugar or jelly and set it out for the bugs to discover. They’ll take it back to the nest with them, eat the stuff, and they’re toast. It’s very effective for eliminating cockroaches, ants, potato bugs, silverfish, and waterbugs. And it’s odorless. I think it’s much better than those toxic chemical sprays and liquids, that are horribly toxic to people and pets as well as bugs. There’s a good post about insect control here.

We’ve tried putting some borate in the kitchen, along the countertop behind the sink, and I haven’t seen any ants since! I’ve heard that borate treatments are effective but slow to act… I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for any more ants, but I haven’t seen any since applying the borate powder.