planting with mosquitoes

It isn't summer yet—though the days are already in the middle 80s!—but mosquitoes are already everywhere this spring.

Today, I finally got ‘round to sowing additional sweet corn to fill up the spaces in one of my beds. I did seed in March but somehow, the shriveled up corn seeds failed to germinate.

the corn-and-zucchini bed, where the corn seeds didn't
germinate well. had to play catch up and sow more
corn seeds. hope all of them sprout, wfc

And I added some big Spanish onions and evergreen bunching onions in my, er, onion beds.

the onion-and-garlic bed (L to R, respectively), where
new onions--bunching and Spanish--were sown.

I also transplanted two of my zucchini seedlings from one bed to the one, empty bed beside it. Both were growing robustly so I didn’t have the heart to throw them away once I’ve thinned out the zucchinis.

And speaking of transplanting and throwing away, I found enough nerve to uproot two leafless okras and replacing them with catch-up ones I’d sown in late March.

the two tiny okras in the foreground are the catch-ups
i transplanted today

The seeds that I got from another company were doing poorly so I decided to sow more just in case. Good thing, because as soon as the weather evened up, my okra bed was like patchwork, bald spots glaring at me whenever I came to water my garden.

Like I was to blame for a seed company’s poor choice of mother okra to harvest seeds from!

one of my perfect okras last season, from another seed company
i didn't use this growing season. 

One of the beds, too, had half of it planted with carrots but the other half was bare. I couldn’t let that premium real estate go to waste so I decided to sow more garden beans.

more garden beans sown here

In our family, we can’t get enough of our beans so more plants bearing beans is always a good thing, right?

garden beans emerging from one of the vegetable beds this season

Overall, it was a fruitful gardening day, sowing seeds and transplanting seedlings.

The only blight to my enjoyment were the mosquitoes. They were buzz buzz buzzing everywhere!

One of my few pet peeves is this tiny pesky scourge of mankind, particularly because they always seem to make a beeline for me even if I’m in the midst of a crowd.

What’s so good about my blood that I’m always the first victim of choice, huh?

And whenever mozzies mess up with me, I’m always the big loser.

Argh! I was itching not only along my legs and feet but also all over my arms!

Hubby got mad when he saw the red skid marks that my nails made when I scratched my skin like crazy. I was afraid he was going to declare the backyard forbidden territory from now on but he just harrumphed, heh.

Methinks he was thinking that he wasn't insane enough to engage one obsessed vegetable gardening fan--and his wife, to boot!--in an argument about the pros and cons of backyard gardening.

Good thing I had White Flower, a mentholated oil balm from the Chinese that's good for the itches. The relief was instant!

I'm planning on growing me some catnips and citronella in my garden to ward off them mozzies when I putter 'round my backyard.

I wonder where I can get citronella, mosquitoes' sworn enemy, here in Central Florida though. Anybody have any idea?