There be ticks in them thar hills

It seems we are in the middle of a plague of tiny ticks at our house at the moment. Our house backs onto bush, and there are creeks throughout our area – perfect for ticks! 😦

Normally we see a variety of sizes, ranging from teeny tiny pin-prick ticks up to size-of-a-glass-headed-pin. Thankfully we are only getting the itty bitty ones at the moment, because I’m developing a bit of a reaction to the bite of the larger kind!

I’m not feeling particularly thankful at the moment, though, because these tiny ticks are really destroying my enjoyment of the garden. I’m now going outside dressed from head to toe like this:

Now that’s a face that says “happy to be gardening”!

In short, I’m putting a rain slicker and ski pants over the top of whatever clothes I’m wearing, in order to go out into my garden and pick herbs, sort out the chickens, wrangle the children, etc. The ticks are THAT BAD! I figure that with a layer I can peel off immediately I might have some chance of avoiding the ones that crawl onto your skin from your clothing.

We’ve also been dosing up on insect repellent and showering after garden exposure. I’m getting pretty sick of washing all the tick infested clothes!

Arrrrrrrgggggh!