It's that time of year again.  We had some cool weather, and then when it started heating up, houses around me have stink bugs crawling all over them!  Where'd they come from?  Why are they on my house.... and oh my gosh they stink when you smoosh them!  

Someone told me to flush them down the toilet, but my water bill will be higher than my electric bill if I keep that up!  Why are they here, and how do I get rid of them?  

A quick little google search told me that stink bugs come out of their winter hiding spots in the spring when it starts to warm up, and they are trying to head inside your homes right about now in preparation for the winter.  So if you're one of those people who look for nature signs, you might add this to your list supporting a long, cold, early winter this year.  We noticed we had that nice cool spell a bit ago, and as soon as it warmed up, our neighborhood was swarming with them.  They're trying to find a winter home, and it's definitely not going to be in mine!

So where are they all summer then? Apparently, they live in tree canopies for most of the summer.  They tend to like black locust, maple and ash trees.  If you have garden variety vegetables, they particularly like vining plants like cucumbers and zucchini.  They've been known to eat the skins of your tomatoes, but amazingly they won't touch garlic.  As far as your crops go, you can plant dill and fennel in with your plants as those attract some of the parasitic wasps that feed on stink bugs.  But no animal is a natural predator for the stink bugs.  I find that fact absolutely crazy.

So how do we get rid of these things?  They truly are a nuisance pest....  I can't stand having these things crawling around my home let alone inside!  The google search said things that every homeowner should do anyways, like seal up cracks along openings (windows, doors, etc).  Even cracks in the cement blocks part of your home - my aunt saw stink bugs going into a crack near her chimney outside.  It was super small, but once she used her fireplace, guess what was in her house?  You guessed it! Stink bugs!

Here's what I did.  I made a 2 liter bottle trap and it works!   I put a link from youtube at the bottom showing how to make one.  Once you take the top off the bottle you invert it into the bottle and just tape it together.  I put water and a few squirts of dish liquid inside (I had Dawn right now, but you could use any type).   What happens is, when you put the bottle under the stink bug, it will let go and drop  (it almost seems like that's their escape mechanism), and they fall into the nasty water!  One of the gross things, which attests to how hardy these beasties are, they will actually swim underwater and not die right away!  Ewwwwwww.  But the best part is that you don't handle the bug, and they don't emit that nasty odor because they aren't smooshed!  WIN WIN!

Anyways, after a few days, you'll notice your stink bug trap will stink.... time to throw it out and make a new death trap.  We even have an old green pen (you can see it next to the bottle) that we use to just give them a gentle touch to let go and drop. My husband absolutely HATES handling/killing any type of bug.  Now that he's seen how easy it is, if he sees one, he'll go get the trap and scoop the bug.

We're hoping that by grabbing the ones near our home that maybe we interrupt the cycle and maybe we won't see as many in the spring.  Either way, it feels good to not have these things crawling on my home and in my garden!  Not to mention, my dog likes to eat them.... again.... ewwwwww.

Do you have any ways you've caught the stink bugs near your home without breaking the bank?  Were you successful?  Feel free to share them by leaving a comment!

I know I've shared my love of gardening with everyone, and what's great about gardening is there are so many different types!  You like herbs? Grow 'em!  I made a butterfly garden that I consider very successful, but for some people, they may not like a bunch of caterpillars eating all their prized plants.  But I think the butterflies that come in my yard are beautiful!

My assistant shared with me her dilemma/success that happened to her this year.  She lives in a rental house, which can pose many gardening challenges because you shouldn't really change the home's gardens if you don't own them!  So she's been growing her tomato, herbs,  pepper and cucumber plants in pots on their deck.

Here's where the crux came in. Along the fence in their back yard is this sprawling bush. I asked her what the bush was and she didn't know.  All she did know is the owner let it grow out of control, and told them they could cut it back, even saying "that bush is a pain in the butt.  If you kill it, good for you!"  

Her husband tried to cut it down to the root stock, and it keeps growing back.  My assistant has 3 puppies (YES, 3 puppies) and with the puppies comes their deposits in the yard.  One of the way they dispose of those presents is to dig a hole in their yard, fill it with those presents and recover up the hole.   They've lived in yards with horrible yards, and the areas where the dog poop gets buried eventually turns into wonderful grassy sections.  Her yard here was so dry and barren it had cracks in it!  

But this isn't about grass....

So this past winter (which was a mild one here), she got the idea she was going to kill that bush once and for all.  So she'd start digging her doggie poop holes by that bush.  She figured that stuff and the volume of dog presents had to be toxic enough to kill that bush!  If she overlapped the holes, she was amazed how they were FULL of worms!   The area where the dog poop was buried filled in with grass nicely, and the bush didn't really grow in as full as it did the past few years, so they thought it was a success.

 Until June came.

Once the weather started warming up, the first tomato plant came up.   She nicknamed them the "Immaculate Conception Plants" because she didn't plant them, they just started coming up.  So she put a tomato stake around one, and threatened her kids to not cut the tomato plant down when the grass was getting cut!  Initially she thought one of the tomatoes from her pots had mistakenly gone over there (by maybe a bird or a squirrel), so she counted herself thankful she had another tomato plant!

Then another plant came up right next to the bush.  And then another. The picture you see above is how the tomato plants look in September.  They're so huge and so many they've grown up and over the fence.  The shovel is a full size shovel so you can see how tall these have gotten (over 6 foot tall)  . They are a mix of kinds too : they have round red cherry tomatoes, oblong red cherry and yellow cherry which are called Sungold (which she had in pots already).

Then they started to wonder how the heck those plants grew, because they didn't plant the tomatoes in the poop holes.  Then they figured it out.  Just like when she comes here to work, she gives my dog Maggie some of the veggies out of her lunch.  And of course her dogs get the fresh veggies when they cook at home (who said dogs don't eat vegetables?). The best they can figure is the seeds came out, and added with all the vitamins and things that are in dog food, those seeds probably had the best environment to grow in.  Those doggie presents decomposed in the yard, and were eaten by worms, so those seeds had all kinds of wonderful dirt to grow in.

The bush is in there somewhere , she said it's about knee high, and the rest is tomatoes.

Do you count this as a gardening success, or a failure?   I think it's a success and it gives her growing 4 legged crew more yummy snacks for next years crop!  LOL!

Leave me a comment weighing in on which side of the debate you fall on.

When thinking about things to add to my website, the first question I asked was "What brings people to Annapolis?"   When you're a tourist here, or you first move here, what do you hear about? What do you want to go see and do? And every time I sat down and made a list, the Naval Academy was on that list.

YET, I've only been on the yard a handful of times!  I went to see the Blue Angels, which can hardly be an experience where you're enjoying what the Naval Academy has to offer.  And last October, we went to the All Saints Day Concert in the Chapel.  Since then I've tried to visit and did visit the museum under the Chapel, but I didn't document any of it!

I went a few weeks ago intending to do just that.  Forefront in my mind was, if I was a tourist, what would I want to see?  And THAT'S what I took pictures of.  I had some information on what I was seeing, but it wasn't until I got home did I realize how special some of the items I was looking at really were. Boy did I walk a lot of miles!!  (Hint, wear good walking shoes when you go.)

There's a lot of history on the yard.  Whether it's the monuments that have made their way there, or the cannons that were in historic battles, to the planes that saw even more battle, or to the people who chose to be buried there, the Naval Academy grounds are truly awe inspiring. It became my mission to find out more about what I saw, and now that I know more, I want to go back, almost just to pay tribute. I had a lot of fun learning about Tecumseh, and now I'm obsessed with finding out all the different forms he's taken.  If you have a picture of Tecumseh in his paint (so to speak) please send it to me so I can add it to our collection!

If you're in town and would like to go on a tour of the Academy, I'm in!  Let me know and I'll go around with you.  Please feel free to use these pages for more information while you're on the yard. If you find out some more information you think someone may find helpful, please susanne@lnf.comsend it to me and I'll add it to that page.  Let's Go Mids!