The joys of salt marsh living

We got home from Newport on Sunday, I walked out to my garden to check on my happily ripening vegetables. In the three minutes I was out there, I got no less than 10 mosquito bites, and killed at least twenty of the little buggers.

What the heck? It hasn't rained in a month. There's no standing water anywhere, which means the mosquito population should be smaller, not larger. But, it was dusk, so I didn't think about it too hard. But the same thing happened Monday at high noon in the baking sun. Then scirocco solved the mystery, by finding this out on the web. Interesting stuff. And we were smack dab at the start of one of the bad periods.

Who knew that there were particular types of mosquitos that like salt water instead of fresh? If I'd thought about it, I would have realized that the higer tides would make pools for mosquito breeding. The link to the integrated Marsh Management, while limited, is also intersting. It makes sense to me that the undisturbed ecosystem would have more checks on the mosquito population than the current disturbed one. I hope they get down our way to fix more marshes soon.

And darn if this morning when I went out to check the garden, I only got one mosquito bite in five minutes of outside time.