It’s Weed and Bug Time Again
admin May 3rd, 2007
It’s spring: great weather, but with a few dysfunctional side effects.
I’ve got an old house with lots of cracks, damp spots, and really neat places for bugs to get in and breed, and since spring is swarming season, we are about to be overrun with ants, cave crickets and a number of other beasties. Every spring the house gets infested with ants (not termites, thank goodness) and we end up having to toss a lot of food and spray some nasty stuff. This is not good for the environment, but the ants aren’t good for us.
The outside isn’t any better, and given the poor soil and shade, the weeds can be overwhelming, and like a lot of people I don’t have enough time to spend hours every week weeding by hand. The easy solution is to buy broad-spectrum weed killers and spay regularly. Again, not good for the environment.
So what am I supposed to do?
It seems the possible solutions run the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous.
On one hand I could just say, as some simple-livers do, that we should just live and let-live and not bother the insects and weeds since we are all part of God’s creation and people aren’t any more important than the ants. This may be the more ridiculous end of the spectrum, but I would really like to join this group. Philosophically I agree and it is the most environmentally sensible approach, and it would sure save me some time and angst.
But there is this other ‘socialized’ part of me that has been taught to have a well maintained, neat looking place that looks like someone cares about it, or that I care about myself and how I live, not to mention that “we should take care of what God has given us.” This part is actually quite deeply embedded in my psyche. I’m not sure if I like that or not. And then there’s the fact that I just don’t like the sight of ants parading through all my food, and the weeds seem to make the place look like a dump rather than nature.
Toward the more sublime end is the ‘have your cake and eat it too’ version of simple living that holds that we can use weed killers and insecticides and have a nice, neat place, as long as these products are environmentally friendly: no fuss, no muss, no angst. I like this version too, because they make my life a lot easier, if not more philosophically satisfying.
On the other hand (this is like one of those good news-bad news stories) although some of the green insecticides that use pyrethrum for example, work pretty well, they also kill a lot of bugs that
aren’t a problem along with those that are. I’ve also used some of the natural herbicides, but they don’t work nearly as well as the real toxic stuff, and tend to leave the place looking not only weedy, but half dead in the bargain.
In between these extremes may be some reasonable solutions. I think this year I’ll use mulch again as much as possible (thankfully our congregation has a mulch sale each spring), and try different brands of natural herbicides, maybe in higher concentration, and
I’ve just signed a pest control contract with a company that uses natural ingredients and other green measures. In this case expertise may be better than a lot of toxics. So I’m going toward the sublime route.
I’d really like to know what other folks are doing about these issues and how they’re working out.