Ah yes, My favorite pest! Those little black scallywags are a plague. In reality, I only hate them when they're about so numerous that you start breathing them in. Yes, they get that bad. No, it has been a while since an infestation that bad has happened. And yes, they are one more signal in Nature that things are changing. And yes, I have seen them start to appear.
Along with a morning that...isn't hot.
Oh yes, it is hot in the MORNING in Mississippi for most of August. I'm talking daylight morning, not your 9am workday, too. By 9am I'm finishing whatever I had planned and am retreating to climate control. Walking into a DARK wet blanket is the pits. Sweating before the sun comes up is a thing to be avoided if possible. I'm for cancelling August entirely.
But there is hope, as signaled by the occasional little black fly. So far, they are only singular and sort of skinny. The orgy is yet to come maybe. Or everyone is mad at each other and not talking, according to the sample I have seen. We'll see how bad it really does get but I know one thing. A car washing is necessary. And some of the best sailing is when they're at full force ;D
We usually start our morning walk about 7:30. This morning it felt a bit like fall here in SC. The head band I wear to keep the sweat out of my eyes was barely damp after the 40-minute fast walk. The high is headed to 90 with low humidity and that also feels so much better than it has been. But I know this is just a short tease of things to come. I am for cancelling both July and August anymore.!! The bugs haven't been bad at all this year. Have only had a few mosquitos. Lots of lightning bugs earlier in the year which I always enjoy seeing.
In the North Sip, my wife and I generally start our walk in the summer at 6:00 AM. From our house to the golf course; we're not members but walking the course is OK before the 9:00 AM open so it is usually just us and the grounds crew who we have gotten to know. The total is three miles and during the summer we usually return to the house and immediately change clothes as we are soaking wet. Last two days we were dry, no change. But yes, just a tease.
With regard to the bugs and bringing sailing into this discussion, one early June day we decided to sail out to Five Fingers on Bay Springs Lake and spend the night. Was a great sail out, anchored, swam off the boat, cooked some steaks on the Magma, had a glass of wine with dinner and turned in just after dark. 8) Because this finger has lots of trees that block the anchor light at the top of the mast, I usually hang a light at the end of the boom so any night time power boaters will see us. I think that might have been a mistake. Woke up in the middle of the night with an infernal buzzing noise in the cabin. Turned on the light and found the cabin full of Mayflies. Looked out the hatch and found the whole boat was covered with a swarm of them. :o We're talking thousands of bugs. Certainly harmless but just bad luck that we picked the night that this crew hatched out, did their thing and died, dropping their eggs for the next generation. I think the light attracted them to us. Many buckets of lake water to remove their carcasses from the boat the next morning. I'm sure it was a feeding frenzy for the fish.