Tiny Ticks and Wildflowers

Dandelions continue to plague my gardens. This is what I see when I close my eyes at night. It is not that I don't carefully weed and mulch ..... they take root on top of the mulch and grow. If I catch them in time, they are quite easy to pluck out, but miss one and the root will go down through the mulch and the weed barrier and form a long tap root .... to China! Can't be helped, unless I convince HeWho mows to spread weed and feed over the entire 30 acres. I have done this on the smaller yards, but that dandelion fluff can go long distances on the wind.

I suppose I could do what one camper told us to do. He thought eliminating all my gardens, just mow them down should be the way to go. In fact, he thought we would be wise to asphalt the entire park. No maintenance, he said. That would be lovely .......

I will not be taking that advice. My peace lily is blooming. It looked like it had died this winter. I left it in the pot and stuck it outside anyway. It got watered with all the rest of my plants and started new little shoots of life.

Just look at it now. How could I deny myself the pleasure of my flowers?

I realize this one is in a pot, but my grounds are looking very full and lush with tiger lilies and purple bearded iris in bloom. The purple cone flowers are making an appearance and soon the black-eyed suzies will pop out.

My hands look awful. I do have gloves and I use them .... when I remember to grab them on my way out the door. I am fighting my way through a jungle of wildflowers in one of my large gardens. Seems like they came in overnight and pushed their way through to cover the entire area. I am trying to carefully pull them out without pulling up my perennials that were trying to come up.

As I was trimming tree branches, in order to be able to go under them and grab the over-takers and other weeds, I am sure I was coming into contact with dreaded ticks and mosquitoes.

Mosquitoes aren't too bad in the park, due to the bats that feed and the colony of purple martens we encourage to nest here. Ticks are another story. We regularly check each other for ticks. I will find them on my neck right at my hairline, probably because I am usually bending over to grab weeds.
Yesterday, as I was manning the desk to take swimmer money, I was itching. On my right breast. When I found myself alone I would discreetly scratch at my itch, but it was not until I was in the kitchen preparing our evening meal that I decided to yank my shirt and sports bra up and have a look. There was something miniscule there on my breast. Smaller that the lead of a pencil. It was foreign, for sure, but what exactly it was I could not tell. It was itching like crazy and I finally located my bifocals. Really I needed a magnifying glass, but at the correct angle, in just the right light, I finally saw the hair-like legs.

It was the smallest tick I had ever seen and required tweezers to be able to grab it and remove it. And .... it hurt! I smashed that little tick between my thumbnails and felt a satisfying little snap.

Now, though, every little blemish I see on my skin is suspect! Did not stop me from continuing my garden deliverance from wildflowers this morning, though! The only way I could have gotten a tick in my bra was when the cordless phone fell and I picked it up and stuck it back in my bra. Surely I would have felt the thing crawling up my body and into my breast sanctuary to latch onto my breast. I wonder just how long that journey would have taken? I am not tall, but compared to that tick .....

How do I title this post? I could certainly make it titillating (pun intended). Like  "How Far Would A Tick Travel To Munch On My Breast?" I can come up with a lot more, but fear they would be subject to censor.