Late freeze

As of now, they’re saying 29º Monday night. They’re also making some racket about a slight snow chance, if you can believe that.

Late freezes are tough on plants. Lea’s already started our garden, and she’ll have to protect some of her more tender charges.

As much as I dislike cold weather, I welcome a late freeze. As hard as one is on plants, it’s also tough on mosquitoes, houseflies, and the paper wasps who tonight decided they didn’t want to live in my gas grill after all when I made it 400º in about five minutes.

The second or third year we lived here—so, six or seven years ago—we had a perfect season for mosquitoes. I mean, those nasty bitches would carry you off. It was unreal. Quoting myself on Usenet at the time:

If I sit on my deck at dusk or later, I am bitten every 30 seconds or so. I can see three or four at all times. They are so numerous that I have to be very careful about them getting in the house when I open the back door–a lot bigger deal to me now that I have a baby. They seem to be mostly tiger mosquitoes, if that matters. It was just like this last year. I’ve done the obvious stuff like make sure there’s no standing water around. Three tiki torches with citronella oil on the deck seem to cut them by a third maybe–not nearly enough. Insect repellent is effective, of course, but quite inconvenient.

I ended up trying a carbon-dioxide-from-propane/octenol device at most of $300, but wound up sending it back. I followed all of the directions and was eminently patient with different orientations and so forth; damned thing just didn’t work.

But a late freeze does. Bring it on.

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