Living with nature in natural environment means a bit more
than just enjoying the enormous beauty around. It also means that nature will
come in your life in different forms not always in a pleasant way. I’ve told
you previously about dealing with mice, you can find that story here: Part 4: Unregistered Household Inhabitants. (opens in new window)
Other parts of the story:
Other parts of the story:
Part 2 here: Worries for the 2 Months Alone (opens in new window)
Part 3 here: The main principles of our countryside life. Or life in general, no matter where. (opens in new window)
Living with blood-suckers
Those small creatures and critters are a big deal. Honestly,
a big deal.
- Mosquitoes are annoying and impossible to control – they take care of ruining late nights around the fireplace.
- Fleas travel with animals, hide in the grass and are hard to eliminate if they’ve moved into house. Terrible blood-sucking creatures.
- Ticks are carriers of lyme disease and encephalitis, that can even kill.
Bee stings and ant bites? No, they don’t disturb me that
much. I’m disturbed by ants coming indoors and trying to eat my sweets, but
even more I’m disturbed by the previously mentioned ones – all of them craving
to feed on human blood.
And then there are also our efforts to keep our household
methods as nature-friendly as possible. No, it’s not easy. Poisoning one
creature might lead to poisoning other beneficial creatures that take care of
our wellness without us even knowing it, and bringing toxics in the house just
doesn’t excite me. Spraying the house and beds with poison that kills those
insects harming health of everyone in the house isn’t what I’m looking for. So,
we are on the figt for some time with the main goal of keeping specific insects
out of specific zones indoors and outdoors.
Fleas
Those blood-suckers lived here before us and they seem to
enjoy our blood, and we haven’t stumbled upon a miracle to ban them from our
living space. We have tried cleaning rooms with turpentine like in the old
days. Not much of success with that. We have tried putting different herbs in
beds (fresh and dried) that are supposed to repel fleas, but not very
successful eaither. First habnd helpers are flea repellent straps for cat and
dog. Definitely increases their own wellbeing and doesn’t allow fleas to
hitchike on them into the house. We can’t really fight them outdoors, they live
in grass, so, at least around the house we are keeping the grass short. The
method that helps indoors is cleaning beds and sofas with baking sod (scatter
on beds, leave for at least a few hours, if possible, overnight, and then
vacuum clean, I usally steam clean after that as well). This gives peace for a
while. So, we are repeating this procedure regularly and it helps.
Mosquitoes
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| That's my "mosquito cape"! |
Mosquitoes are inevitable here. We live between the river and
woods, and these flying creatures are annoying. Truly annoying. Since childhood
kids here know that in order to stay protected they have to spend a lot of time
on swings on Easter – that’s a folk wisdom, that unfortunately isn’t very
effective against mosquitoes and mosquito bites. There are different sprays
that we sometimes use, depending on the amounts of mosquitoes trying to suck
our blood. I have a summer cape that I sometimes sprinkle with essential oils
like eucalyptus, lemongrass, peppermint, lavender, cloves. The cape (from a
thick yet light fabric) itself actually is pretty useful protection against
mosquitoes.
I tried cloves pinched into lemon slices and palced them
around fireplace for a night with frieds. We had been eaten a lot by the
mosquitoes before that night, but that one
night on Midsummer we really weren’t disturbed! The problem is that I’m not
sure my cloves into lemons were the thing that helped. Because starting from
the next day mosquito wave was gone and there were noticeably less of them
everywhere.
For the next year I’m planning to plant a lot more lemon balm
in resting spots as they are supposed to repel mosquitoes. The issue here is
that they also attract other insects. It’s nice to party and rest with
butterflies, but not very nice with vasps... i’m still thinking.
Another thing – I need a little pond for frogs as they eat mosquitoes.
We are also trying to befriend birds by placing close to home and garden birdfeeders
with food, and in spring we are planning to put at least a few birdhouses
around to invite birds staying with us. They also feed on mosquitoes and other
insects.
If you have a proven homemade mosquito repellent recipe,
please she in the comments! I’m really eager to find what works!
Ticks
There is vaccine available for tick encephalitis, but ticks unfortunately
can be also carriers of lyme disease that doesn’t have a treatment so far and
there is no vaccine against that as well. We can’t keep ticks out of woodlands
and we can’t keep ourselves out of woodlands as we have chosen to live here. So,
we have to make ourselves invisible, unattractive and unavailable to ticks. I’m
on a mission to finding a natural
solution for repelling ticks and I don’t have a miracle potion yet.
Our natural solution here is proper clothing for going into
forest. We have no cute pictures of ourselves half-naked in forest – that would
be a clear invitation for forest insects, including ticks to feed on us.
Talking about ticks, here is an article FYI: Lyme disease is
set to explode and we still don’t have a vaccine
I mean, I can surf the internet looking for solutions, but
most of the solutions for these trivial issues posted online don’t help much. They
are obviously posted online for the sake of posting and getting views for the
page, not for the sake of helping. I can experiement until I find what works,
but sometimes I just need a break with something that REALLY WORKS. Of course,
life itself isn’t harmless and we all will die sooner or later, but I kind of wish to stay strong and protect
my loved ones. For that reason: always remove all your clothes and check
yourself carefully after returning from woods to make sure none of them is
trying to find a spot for sucking your blood. We still are looking for a strong,
natural tick repellent, if there is any.
That’s the reality, and blood suckers aren’t the only critters
to intervene with our daily lives. There
are ants stealing our sweets and vasps drowning in our sweet drinks. There are
flies, that don’t allow leaving any food on table uncovered. Spiders are
friends in helping to deal with flies. There is no spider that has ever done
anything bad to me (and we don’t have poisonous ones here), and they eat flies.
We let them feast. And then there is another creature that now gives me chills:
earwig. The next blog post (a short one!) will be my earwig story. And thanks to the changes of season, now in winter we can have a rest from almost all of them. In some fields of well-being winter colds come with a relief!
I could shine the light on everything what is great and
amazing in coutryside (and I am and will be doing that!) and pretend that the
unpleasant part doesn’t exist. It exists and it is faced here not just now and
then, but every day. And it’s fun as well, as it makes you to become a
researcher of things you never cared about and a kitchen alchemist mixing
things you’ve never mixed together before. It doesn’t allow you to sit, but
always pushes for seeking solutions.
Find the previous posts of "Moving to Woodlands" here:
You are welcome to leave your questions, ideas & worries
in the comments, as I'm curious about what you have experienced and what solutions you have found!
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