So this is retirement?

[altivo]

Today's schedule:

• 5:30 am - Rise, take meds, record blood pressure, feed fish, wind clocks, check e-mail. (62 new messages)
  
• 6:30 am - Go out and feed horses and ducks, dodging mosquitoes on the way
  
• 7:15 am - Feed dog
  
• 7:30 am - Breakfast
  
• 8:00 am - Answer some e-mail, delete a lot of it
  
• 8:30 am - Go out with husband to clean stalls, set up hay for next 24 hours, dodge more mosquitoes
  
• 8:50 am - Chase neighbors' chickens out of garden
  
• 9:00 am - Prepare sample recordings for musical group ThingamaJig consideration
  
• 10:00 am - Update grocery shopping list, plan to shop after rehearsal
  
• 10:30 am - Leave for ThingamaJig rehearsal, with stop at bank on the way to make a payment
  
• 11:30 am - Rehearsal until 2:30 pm
  
• 2:30 pm - Go to lunch with husband, stopping for gas and car wash on the way
  
• 3:00 pm - Lunch
  
• 3:15 pm - Hay supplier calls to ask if he can drop off a load of hay this afternoon
  
• 3:45 pm - Finish lunch, plan to head straight home to meet hay supplier, skip grocery shopping
  
• 3:50 pm - Discover that brake lights, tail lights, and rear turn signals are out on husband's car
  
• 4:30 pm - Arrive home, chase neighbor's chickens out of garden, put Tess in her stall
  
• 4:40 pm - Dismantle Tess' indoor portable pen to allow hay wagon to get into barn
  
• 5:00 pm - Unload hay, working up a lot of sweat, write check for Sunday's & today's deliveries (ouch)
  
• 5:45 pm - Examine brake lights, discover that a) the plastic housings for both lights have melted from
  the heat of the bulbs, making it very difficult to remove them; and b) both bulbs are broken
  apparently due to water from the car wash hitting them while hot; replace bulbs, reassemble
  
• 7:00 pm - Feed other 2 horses and put them in their stalls, then discover that during the day a huge
  dead oak branch has fallen on their fence, knocking two rails out of it (fortunately horses
  are lazy and did not wander off)
  
• 7:15 pm - Temporary repairs to fence; remove huge branch from dry lot; pick up after horses
  
• 7:45 pm - Shower to remove sweat and mosquito repellent that made me sneeze but didn't work
  
• 8:15 pm - Feed dog; fix salad for dinner, eat it
  
• 9:00 pm - Sign into bank online and shuffle funds around so check to hay guy doesn't bounce
  
• 9:15 pm - Let the dog out, he sniffs around but does nothing
  
• 9:30 pm - Write this post
  
• 9:45 pm - Go to bed knowing dog will want to go out at 11:00 and probably again at 2:00 am because
  he drank a gallon of water after eating his supper
  

Any questions?

Comments

[frith]

Can't you get the horses to fight the mosquitoes for you? Applying Ultra Shield or some similar bug spray for horses to their legs every few days should do the trick. Works with the llama in my back yard.

[altivo]

I've used Ultra Shield but I thought it was only a repellent, not an actual killing product. Same for most of the horse sprays. Lately I've been putting Endure on them. Works well and seems to last longer. Unless they're out in a drenching rain, I don't have to reapply it for four or five days.

Neither product seems to keep down the number of mosquitoes, it just keeps them from landing on the horses. If the horses and dogs are not eligible, they go for the next warmest thing in the vicinity: me. About half the repellent products for humans leave me gasping for breath, coughing, sneezing. It's not the DEET, because Cutter's has that and I can use it. It must be the unnecessary perfumes they add. Off! is the worst.

[frith]

Ultra Shield does both. Part of my stable fly hunting strategy at work is to spray them directly with Ultra Shield as they loaf on walls and fences. It kills them, some faster than others. The insecticide is the pyrethrin, a compound developed from a chrysanthemum extract. I used to have swarms of mosquitoes in back yard -- I live on the edge of a wet forest. Since I started spraying the legs of one llama with pyrethrin bug spray for horses and livestock, the mosquitoes have mostly vanished. I can watch for shooting stars without wearing DDT and without swatting mosquitoes.

I'm unable to eliminate stable flies at work, there are too many areas other than my own where people can't spray at least one animal or don't have the time. and the flies move. But this year, probably due to the cool month of July, I seem to have kept the swarms of stable flies down to an annoying dozen.

Mosquitoes, noseeums, deerflies and horseflies seem to be more sensitive to pyrethrins than stable flies.

[altivo]

Pyrethrins work well on fleas. I'm not so convinced about it with mosquitoes. This county has a lot of standing water after rain, and has had excessive rain this summer, so mosquitoes abound. There are so many that the spray on my three horses can hardly put a dent in the population. We used to have quite a few barn swallows and tree swallows in the summer, but I have seen none this year. Likewise for bats. I don't know the reason for that, but it's not a good thing I'm sure. We do still have dragonflies and fireflies, but not in the abundance there used to be. I know the dragonflies help control mosquitoes as well and I think I have read that fireflies are also carnivorous.

West Nile has surfaced in the mosquito population again this summer, so avoiding bites is important for everyone. The only family member who has good protection is our dog. He has a really dense coat all over so only his nose is exposed and that is pretty thick skinned.

[frith]

I had a lot of fireflies earlier this summer, it was very nice. In Africa, one method to kill tsetse flies is to hang up some black cloth and put insecticide on that, the theory being that the flies are attracted to the black cloth, land, make contact with the insecticide and die. That's pretty much my working hypothesis with spraying the one llama, although I was only after the stable flies. All the other blood suckers that died were a boon. Pyrethrin insecticide is what the vet at work provides us, either Veto Equin or Ultra Shield. We also used it to kill lice on an ass (other times we used Dry Kill). I haven't had to deal with fleas yet.

[altivo]

I've found that yellow cloth or rope is very attractive to flies here. In fact, some sticky fly traps are colored fluorescent yellow and I'm sure that's why. In the house I use squares of clear sticky plastic that are sold as fly traps. You put them on a window near the bottom and flies walk onto them and stick. They work quite well, but look pretty gruesome after a few weeks, just covered with dried up flies and other bugs.

Usually at this time of year we have dry weather and the mosquitoes pretty much disappear after a week or two. Hasn't happened yet, and in fact it's supposed to rain again tonight.

[soanos]

Oh, my. Somepony is being busy.

I envy you for having such an active life and someone to share it with.
My "retirement" here is more like:

Wake up between 04:00-10:00.
Have breakfast between 9:00-12:00.
Try to do shopping if that is needed 14:00-19:00.
Try to keep distracted (gaming and chatting seems to do it, for now.) 10:00-??.
Perhaps make dinner at some point between 18:00-00:00 (if I remember to make one).
Go to bed... anywhere between 00:00-07:00.
Also, trying not succumb to depression 24/7. :p

You could try using olive oil to repel mosquitoes. Some mix it with cinnamon oil, but both should work. Worth a shot. :)

I had been wondering how Tess (Contessa, was it?) and the others are doing. Hoping to hear they are all well.

[altivo]

Tess is fine, though getting a bit bored because I don't have time to play with her or ride her. She grumps at me about this. You remember correctly that her proper name is Contessa, though I never call her that because she doesn't need to put on airs. :D

Olive oil is great for eating, but I don't care for oily stuff on my skin. It makes me sweat buckets.

[soanos]

Well, at least it is natural. I have used it a couple of times on my neck, ankles and wrists and other exposed areas and it seems to have worked okay for me.
You don't really have to coat yourself completely with it, as appealing as the thought might sound. ;)

[altivo]

Yup, it's natural all right. I've been told I'm not. ;P