Spring Gardening, Mosquitoes and Seaweed
Greetings from the island everyone. I hope that this month’s article finds you doing very well, and I also hope that you enjoyed a wonderful Mothers Day with your beautiful moms this past Sunday. Whether still on this earth or in heaven, a belated very Happy Mothers Day to all the great moms!
I know that not only has the island been receiving a lot of rain lately, but judging by looking at the radar during these little storms, everyone else has also been getting inches of rainfall. It’s great having the rain and we all need it, especially for our Spring vegetable gardens, but I sure could do without the mosquitoes that are always soon to follow.
The island soil drains fairly quickly out here, not leaving standing water for more than a few days at a time, unless the ground is already saturated. Unfortunately, it is these standing water days that hatch out the dreaded mosquitoes that love to dine on our bodies. I have found that those Pic mosquito coils, like the ones we old timers used at the drive-in movies, work very well keeping the mosquitoes away. If the winged demons are really bad, I’ll even light one on the nightstand by my bed at night, and it does a great job. Yes, the coils emit an undesirable aroma, but I’ll take that anytime versus the mosquitoes. Of course dealing with these things are a part of living in south Texas, we just have to pretty much grin and bear it, and keep swatting those pesky little flying demons.
Speaking of Spring gardens, my tomato plants, which basically are the only things that comprise my garden, are doing very well, for the most part. There are a few of them that have became stunted, after originally looking very good, and developed a peculiar extreme leaf curl, but not the normal heat of the day curl. It’s similar to what a weed killer spray would do, which these have not been exposed to at all. I’m hoping the cause is not leftover remnants of tainted horse manure I used in the soil over five years ago, but the only problem plants are exactly where that soil was used. I’ll definitely keep an eye on them and hope for the best.
The beach sargassum seaweed is starting to trickle in, a normal occurrence during that latter part of Spring every year. Some years it comes in much thicker than others, but the past 6-8 years the sargassum has been very light in volume. I read somewhere recently that a very large amount of seaweed is being tracked across the Caribbean, and will eventually make its way into the Gulf of Mexico and onto the Gulf Coast beaches. In listening to these idiots write and talk about it, they make it sound like something straight out of a horror movie, like “The Fog” or “The Blob”, is creeping it’s way towards us with a gruesome health hazard outcome. No! No! No! All beaches need the accumulation of seaweed to help with erosion and beef up our beach dunes.
I’ve seen years out here where the seaweed was 3 feet deep along the ENTIRE four mile stretch of beach, and I spent hours walking through it and searching in it for cool beach finds that become entrapped in it during its journey. And look. . . I didn’t die!! And neither did dozens of other islanders that did the same thing. Yes, it becomes smelly for a time before it sifts into the beach sand and completely disappears, welcome to the antics of Mother Nature. So all those liberal attention seeker types can go get your feelings hurt elsewhere, and bring on the seaweed!!
Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a wonderful day.
