We’ve been working…more…on our front lawn conversion. The sheet mulching we were told was not enough, so we went back to work adding more.

My ever-clever self called up a local golf course and finagled my way into their trash bins for truckloads of grass clippings and yard waste. These I mixed with shredded newspaper and spread 4-8 inches thick over the entire yard. Here’s a mid-way picture:

That’s about where it started. Attack of the Killer Flies. Giant Killer Flies. As big as my head.

I’m assuming it’s the grass clippings, since I’ve never used this much grass in a compost/mulch before and the flies don’t seem to be on the manure at all. But you know you have a fly problem when you hang fly tape in your garage (not the yard mind you, the garage) and within an hour the entire two and a half foot strip looks like this:

And it got worse. We tried adding micro-organisms, we tried adding lime. The pile wasn’t getting hot enough or staying moist enough (with our high temps) to start decomposing and the flies continued to proliferate. So we decided to solarize it. We laid plastic painters tarp over the entire yard in hopes of keeping the moisture in and the flies out. (Oh we also dug up some garden beams that were in our backyard and placed them in our front yard to terrace the slope…see?)

Except I managed to trap a few thousand flies under the tarps. I’m pretending the fly that had the audacity to land on my eyelash is under there. If you put your ear close to the plastic you can hear their little voices…”Heeellllppp meeee, heeeellllppp meeee.” And that my friend, is an immensely satisfying sound.

Another immensely satisfying sound is that of my son adding up the dimes he’s earned for each fly he’s managed to swat in the house. Unfortunately our fly swatter wore out before the flies did! So he got up to nearly $5.00 before he had to call it quits.

On the other hand, it’s been a learning experience. I’ve learned that flies have cannibalistic tendencies and will go after their dead brethren (or maybe that one was in mourning?). I also learned that water excites them. I don’t know if it’s a happy excitement or a infuriated excitement but whenever one of us would go out to water the lawn, we would get dive-bombed by hundreds of the little bastards. Dive-bombed I tell ya!! So they either didn’t like it, or they mistook us for a water park.

We plan to mix in more manure to the compost/mulching if we feel it needs more nitrogen in breaking down. We’re going to wait and see how the decomposition goes. We’re also going to avoid pulling up those tarps if there are still flies around. After the ants, I’m starting to feel like the Girl Who Fought Nature Without Pesticides and Lost. And my woes are not convincing my family members to go chem-free in their own homes.

Changing the subject before I yak…

Oh, remember that tree in my back yard that I thought was a cherry tree? It’s not. It’s a plum tree. A plum tree with plums the size of a cherry, with the sweetest innards you’ll ever taste but the skins more bitter than you can tolerate. I’m still working on that one.

And as for my tomatoes, some of them have blossom end rot which I found was from inconsistent watering. Hmph. So, we rigged a drip system for them over the weekend, because if it’s not working now, just wait until it gets to be 115 outside!

One of our neighbors approached Justin yesterday and said (rather triumphantly, like she’d be Googling for a solution and finally found it) “I know what you’re doing! You’re going to plant strawberries!” Uh, yeah…and pumpkins, watermelon, squash, zucchini, carrots, artichoke….Why she just thought “strawberries” was beyond me. Do strawberries like flies?

But at least the cat’s out of the bag with one of our neighbors and they no longer think we’re totally crazy. Can’t vouch for the rest of them. But the house next door and across the street both sold while we were in the midst of this smelly debacle, so we must not look too kooky.