Monday, July 18, 2011

Bugs...Bug Me...

It’s been hot and sticky for over a week now and we haven’t had any rain in ages. I finally got tired of going out to my tomatoes with a watering can and I broke down and bought a new hose and a sprinkler.

I’m curious to see how the sprinkler does. I’m more curious to see if the pups decide the sprinkler is a friend or an enemy. Since it’s going to be watering their favourite ‘hanging out and watching for squirrels’ spot in the garden, they’re either going to deliberately get wet or they’ll be sulky because they can’t follow their usual routine.

In all honesty, part of me is tempted to enjoy the sprinkler too. It’s so hot out there that whenever you’re out for more than two minutes, your clothes start sticking to you and you’re instantly sweating. It’d be nice to act like a kid and jump through the sprinklers. However, I’ll probably resist just because even though I shouldn’t, I do care what the neighbours think. This is most likely because it would probably involve me wearing a swimsuit and I’m not sure I want to inflict that on the neighbours. Thus, I’ll just be a responsible grown-up and just use the sprinklers for watering my vegetables.

The heat is making it hard to do much outside. It’s too hot to be pleasant and even if we do brave the humidity and heat and attempt to do something outside, there are these rather unpleasant little gnat things that seem to multiply by the second until you’re so tired of trying to brush them off that you end up running inside.

I’m not a fan of bugs anyway. I find them to be a huge nuisance. When I was younger, I used to visualize how nice it would be to go for picnics in meadows of flowers like you see in the movie. Or I’d visualize running down a meadow-hill like that girl at the beginning of “Little House on the Prairie”. Or running through a cornfield, letting the taller corn embrace me and change my perception of the world for a while.

Why I visualized these things, I can’t tell you. I have a weird way of thinking. If you read my blog, you probably know that. The fact is that I did picture these things.

However, the reality of it was never the same because of the stupid bugs. I have yet to find a place on earth where you can sit outside and have a picnic without having some buggy pest drive you a little crazy. It could be mosquitoes that bite and make life unpleasant. It could be spiders who don’t mean to be ominous but are anyway because, well, they’re spiders. It could be those pesky green flies that seem to thrive on vegetation and the pretty the landscape, the more irritating the green flies.

As for the “Little House on the Prairie”- I have yet to find a meadow without similar bug problems. Granted, when the weather is perfect, the bugs are slightly less prominent but try running through prairie-long grass without having a secret fear of ticks, chiggers and other nasty biting bugs.

And then there’s the cornfields. When my family moved to the U.S., we moved to a house in the country. There was corn on all sides of us. My brother and I decided to play in the cornfields. Then, after a few minutes, we realized between many of the rows of corn were spider webs. Inside the spiderwebs were rather terrifying looking spiders that made the experience suddenly far less fun and far more alarming.

Of course, I found out that the spiders were harmless and wouldn’t bite but, well, would you want to risk having a spider like that crawling on you?

Thus, I haven’t run through the corn since. Call me a chicken. Call me a wimp. It’s just that over the years, all of the pleasant, fun outdoor activities that seem so exciting in theory are never quite as exciting in reality because of the bugs.

I shouldn’t let them bother me but it’s hard not to, really. Last night, I went to a dinner party at a coworker’s and we attempted to sit outside. At first, in spite of the heat and humidity, it was pleasant. And then the bugs decided to join us. It was primarily these little black gnats. I’d kill one and three more would appear. We lit bug candles but that had no effect. In the end, when the flies joined in, we abandoned our outdoor gathering and fled inside.

So, I’m not a fan of bugs. I find them annoying. I’m sure there’s a greater purpose to them than to, well, ‘bug’ us. They probably do some good by at least providing a diet to frogs and things. However, it’s hard to see that when you’re outside and suddenly you’re covered by a layer of horrible, tiny biting gnats.

It’s one of the things in summer that I find the most annoying. However, since it comes with the territory, I’ve learned to accept it.

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t bug me.

Ok, I’m done with the bad puns now.

Happy Tuesday!

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