A Wet Season Can Take a Bite Out of You

This bounty is seen, too, in ornamental plants. Trees that might grow a foot a year have doubled their fresh growth. In my garden, I've spent the last month thinning tree and shrub canopies and cutting back some perennials that have bloomed. A bank of fig trees, big shrubs really, have filled out wonderfully at the base of a red oak tree. The climbing hydrangea is now half covering the window of my second-story bathroom. A pair of plant pots, left in April at the edge of an embankment, are now partially engulfed by a burgeoning ground cover, leadwort.

Weeds are having a ball, and anyone who has neglected to weed on a weekly basis can expect to see pokeweed approaching shrub size.

There is another price for all this abundant moisture: the explosion in mosquito populations.

"They're breeding in a lot of places, going by trap counts and what my larviciders are telling me when they're running out of the woods," said Jeannine Dorothy of the Maryland Department of Agriculture. Larviciders have the unenviable job of going to wet breeding grounds to spray the mosquito larvae.

The presence of vernal pools (temporary woodland ponds) has created "a tremendous early-season problem," she said. "Probably at least 60 to 70 percent more mosquitoes" than usual.

Reducing mosquito populations means policing the yard to find and remove any source of standing water, which is easier said than done. Even corrugated drainage pipes can hold, in their interior indentations, enough water for the pervasive Asian tiger mosquito to breed.

This recent import, as we all know, defies native mosquito behavior by being active in broad daylight.

The key is to eliminate the waterborne larvae before they become blood-sucking flyers, said Jorge Arias, of the Fairfax County Health Department. But if your property is overwhelmed by the adult insects, you can spray an insecticide called permethrin labeled for use against mosquitoes. This pesticide is toxic to fish and beneficial insects, so follow the label directions carefully.

Arias pointed out that mosquito problems are made worse in neighborhoods with unoccupied homes in foreclosure. "With people not living there, they don't take care of where the water is accumulating," he said.

So you can imagine my relief when a public relations person named Dustin called out of the blue to tell me about a new product that has outdoor enthusiasts "raving about the head-to-toe protection they get" from the "Don't Bite Me! Patch." This is applied like a nicotine patch, except it infuses your bloodstream with Vitamin B1and aloe, and then you give off an odor that is offensive to mosquitoes.

"I don't think it's going to protect you that much," Arias said when I told him about it. I followed the instructions to the letter and stepped into the garden at 7 p.m., prime time for mozzies. By the time I had dunked a watering can in the fish pond and delivered it to a wilting hydrangea, an Asian tiger was on my index finger probing with her needle. I went over to the veggie garden, where I was unable to offend three more hungry tigers.

Ah, well, back to lemon eucalyptus spray.

Even with the pests, this is a good year in the garden. Last year, the drought withered not just the plants but the gardener's heart. This year's lushness has given us a redeeming paradise.