Here are some visitors who have been around the yard lately!
This butterfly is a Swallowtail and not common here in Toronto, not in our city garden at least.
One thing you might notice is that there are thankfully no mosquitoes, as the last thing I want to slather on my skin is repellent, simply to sit outdoors. I’ve been asked about our apparent lack of them, so for anyone interested, this is what the city of Toronto does to control our mosquito population.
The city is within an area that is at risk of the West Nile Virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, so for the past decade or so Toronto has controlled their population by applying a larvicide to our storm sewers. This results in the larvae not maturing into adult mosquitoes. This is all conducted by trained technicians and approved by the Ministry of the Environment and the Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health. I saw a segment on the news the other day about how they do this. A person rides around the city on a scooter and manually drops a few pellets into every storm sewer. This has worked very well and gone are the days that one wouldn’t dare go outside after dusk at the risk of being badly bitten. More details on the program can be found here. My thanks go out to the city for doing this, as mosquitoes are darn right miserable, aren’t they?
I appreciate you dropping by! Hope you’re week is going well so far.
xo loulou
