Round-Up the Fly Catchers

Everybody knows I don't like to use chemicals. I pull weeds by hand and mulch. I carefully thin my seedlings and redistribute them throughout my gardens. I keep a shallow dish with water and place them in the water until I am ready to move them. It works great.

Due to this global warming that has been accompanied by humidity, I have been in a war with the weeds. I refuse to give up just yet. The flies are flocking at my door. It is even too hot out for them! And, the poison vines have gone berserk. I am spraying them, but they refuse to die!!! Last year someone told us to mix Dawn dishwashing liquid (original formula) with vinegar and spray weeds and grass with that. It does work, but you have to be diligent and spray quite often. Now that I think of it, Dawn dishwashing liquid is in a lot of home remedies. A few drops in apple cider vinegar will rid your house of fruit flies ..........

But, I digress. The poison ivy on the fence has got to go. Can't burn it, don't want to breathe it and the fence is made of wood ...... that wouldn't be good. He who wanted to save money bought this stuff called Eliminator. It eliminated nothing. I did save the bottle since it had a dispenser on it and bought some concentrated Round-Up poison ivy killer. It is supposed to kill other hard to kill shrubs and bushes. I will let you know about that. I mixed it double strength and sprayed everything along the fence and the out buildings. It seems to kill ants on contact, so I have high hopes.

Ants have been another problem, so I have ant bait and ant traps everywhere. For back up I have little mounds of cornmeal all about, since I read that they will take it back to the nest and they are unable to digest it. While on my mission to purchase the ivy killer (and pick up the correct prescriptions for he who has not a clue about his medication) I spied this fly trap. Not fly tape, but this contraption that you simply add water to and hang. The flies are attracted to it and go in, but can't get out. And then you simply toss the entire unit. At less than $5, I thought it would be worth a try. He who loves gadgets was so excited. He filled it and hung it right outside the back door. Every time I let the dogs out I would look closely to see if there were any flies. There were flies printed on the bag itself, so it was hard to tell. It had some granular looking stuff that mixed with the water and I wondered what it was. I detected a faint odor. Smelled a little like the Round-up I had been spraying hither and thither ...........

Being fairly busy with swimmers and the phone I had not bothered to do much in my house, just let the dogs out and back in at appropriate intervals. When all the swimmers left I went out to tackle the aluminum can situation. I won't even go into what was in the recycle receptacles, but when the phone beckoned me back inside I was not very happy. The dogs wanted out as I was washing my hands and sniffing the air. I looked around to see if one of them had left a present on the floor. Floor was clean and dry. As I opened the door the smell was overwhelming. Vomit, smelled like vomit. The handy dandy fly catcher had fallen and burst right outside the back door. This thing lasted two days. It does attract flies, but so does a corpse.

So there you have my product reviews for the day. Eliminating the need to even try Eliminator and the fly catcher? Don't waste your money. I have thoroughly scrubbed the back stoop with bleach. It smells like a pool in here now, but, that is so much better than vomit!