(Originally published June 2022)
Happy Solstice! Summer is here, ah at last! Making their daily appearance are the bugs that bite your legs under the picnic table or fly straight into your pupils when you are walking in the woods. You can actually see them wiggling out of your eyeball to escape. What up with dat? So annoying. By the time late summer rolls around my legs look like I’ve been in a battle with some kind of varmint which chews on my ankles and calves. I don’t feel bugs biting me but when I lay down at night to sleep, my feet begin to twitch with itches. That’s when it becomes apparent, the bugs have been nibbling on me for their dinner.
Yes, it’s nature’s plan that these creatures have some fresh skin and red blood to keep them alive and so we become their unwilling victims. Everything’s gotta eat, right? Just as we put chickens in a pot or fish on the grill for our pleasure, what comes around goes around. Don’t mind me, I’m just trying not to hate these little no-see-ums and I refuse to use deet or other toxic bug repellents.
Natural remedies? Please share yours if you have any that really do work. Citronella candles have to be burned to release their smell and it isn’t wonderful. Kinda makes me sickish and I stay away from it, just like the bugs. Lemongrass oil is safe as a spray to use even on baby’s skin, at least according to the sellers of this oil. Strong scented oils like cinnamon, tea tree, or thyme oil can all be added to a spray bottle with water and sprayed directly on your skin. I assume you have lots of skin exposed since it is officially summer and temperatures have climbed to the 80’s. Too much wet spray will cause warm liquid puddles to stream down your arms and torso mixing with your sweat and that ends up feeling like bugs are crawling all over you!
If you’ve ever had ants in your pants, you know those little suckers bite and you end up with itchy welts. I find calamine lotion or tea tree dapped onto bites will take away the itch.
In your house, vinegar added to water can ward off ants, spiders and mosquitoes if you spray it around your home’s perimeter and entryways. That might be a bit of work. Often the cheap spray bottles I buy at our local box stores end up quitting before the bottle is empty leaving me pumping air. I can testify that I have dumped a one inch thick trail of Borax along my countertops where I find ants gathering. It works. I use this outside, too. It clings to the hairs on their bodies, they find it intolerable and probably deadly.
With summer here, we have lots to enjoy! Have I neglected to mention any of those things? Well, you know what you like to do and I certainly am not one to entertain thoughts on how you should or should not entertain yourselves, so go right to it. If you run into me at the green-space or at the river, you may notice a heavy peppermint-y smell, don’t mind me, just warding off those evil spirits of summer.
(Karen Cohen is a Mistress of her Organic Garden and avid nature explorer. Please email comments/tips to natureswaykaren@gmail.com. Happy Gardening!)
