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I guess its that time of year again...

I do note that you folks have lovely poison ivy.
Dont get me started on that. I have been to the Emergency department twice for severe poison ivy (to the point I had trouble breathing). ITs rampant here. My property is loaded with it. Weed wacking is guaranteed to give me a major dose,, a minor one sometimes from mowing the perimeter of my lawn.

Talked to my doctor, he tells me the reactions is your body panicking to what it determines to be much worse than it is.. He says every time I get it will be worse than the time before.. Hes not wrong.

The ironic thing is my wife is immune!
 
So are our dogs, which makes life interesting when you handle them.
Your wife is immune--until she's not. Over-exposure to the stuff can trigger a reaction that renders you mortal again.

A lot of the loggers around here swear by Tecnu. (We have poison oak that can grow to epic proportions) Tried it--can't say one way or the other if it was effective. I generally use a soft scouring pad and Fels Naphtha soap.
 
I keep a bottle of tecnu in the shower.. if i have a big exposure i fill the tub. Add tecnu and take a soak.

Maybe some pummice soap is a good idea. I burn wood for hrat kn the winter so you can imagine how poison ivy vines create a problem. The thing is.. i have to cut the big furry vines thst choke the trees around my home and. Driveway so they dont die and fall and block the driveway and take down utility wires.

A hand saw vs a chainsaw.. well thats an unwinnable arguument
 
I only have an acre now we're back in NY and it's all grass, but our property backs up to many acres of town watershed forested land. We used to have lots of turkeys, but none for the last few years. I think bird flu or some other disease killed most of them off. Or maybe the coyotes that seem to sweep through the woods chased them away. Lots of noise from ducks quacking back in the watershed swamp or peeper frogs peeping when we sit in the backyard. We still have a herd of deer that eat their way around the house at night to the point that we've had to have the shrubs sprayed with some green deer repellent each fall. A buck polishing his new rack killed one of our Japanese maples by removing most of it's bark a few years ago. There's been a black bear in the neighborhood, but I've not seen it. A rare sighting of a mink or raccoon, but now its mostly putting up with pileated woodpeckers sounds or squirrels and chipmunks running around the backyard.

Biggest pests have been yellow jack wasps building nests everywhere including inside our mailbox. They seem to be getting worse every year despite paying bug people to spray several times a year. I hate those things having been stung 15 or twenty times while playing cub scout touch football as a kid.

When we lived in California one of our cats had a good scare, he was looking out through the glass of our sliding door when a raccoon decided to attack him and ran full bore into the glass. Scared the heck out the cat (and me too), but the raccoon got the worse of the deal. It sat there for a couple of minutes shaking it's head before wandering off. Glad the door was closed or things could have been interesting.
 
Biggest pests have been yellow jack wasps building nests everywhere including inside our mailbox. They seem to be getting worse every year despite paying bug people to spray several times a year. I hate those things having been stung 15 or twenty times while playing cub scout touch football as a kid.
Yup, a major pest here in the PNW. Ground-nesting mostly. I put traps out in the summer when the buggers start to get hungry. Inevitably I end up getting stung simply by walking through an area (when you hear the angry buzz, drop everything and run). There are sprays with long throw to shoot down the nest hole and I've heard that Sevin powder sprinkled around the nest opening is effective. But yeah, I hate the things. I was once stung in the ear canal by one that apparently couldn't tell my head from a hole in the ground.
 
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