A bee suit will provide some protection, but they are usually not 100%. Loose fitting clothing with the openings taped up at your sleeves and pants legs and some heavy leather work gloves along with the veil are probably your best protection. They can sting multiple times, unlike honeybees who can only sting once, so just keep that in mind. Let us know how this goes, I'm interested to see what happens here. If it were me, I would just set the cushion on fire and throw it out. But, that's just me.

To quote the sage advice of the Springfield, MO band, "Big Smith": "If we didn't have those bugs attachin', we'd never know the joy of scratchin'" :) My job requires me to be miles in the wildnerness all day, nearly every day, all summer long. So, I just CAN'T use the poisons because I'd constantly be bathing in them. We just duct tape the bottom of our pant legs to our hiking boots, tuck in our shirts, and keep a roll of duct tape handy for seed ticks. Otherwise, we just enjoy the glorious feeling that comes from scratching those bites! Makes us know that it's truly summertime! Generally, we have between 1 and 1000 ticks on us by the time we get home, but we're happy and tired and know we're ALIVE! I know, I know, this isn't really helpful advice to most. But really, aside from the slim chance of a disease, there's really a lot of psychology involved in the desire to be rid of the "pests". Also, FWIW, I've heard that a tick must be attached 6-12 hours before a disease can be transmitted, presumably because the tick must be filled with some blood to have it sqeezed/regurgitated back into your body during removal. So, if you just keep up with picking them off....

Susan, A lot of the flowers that you have planted for butterflies are native in our pastures.....like partridge pea and cassia, for example, and they are in bloom and looking lovely. We have been cutting pathways through the pastures and not mowing the entire pastures themselves, so the wildflowers are huge and thick and lush, and we have tons of butterflies, moths and numerous other insects. It really is a jungle out there. Having had no rain for a couple of weeks, it was beginning to get pretty dry, but then we received an inch of rain overnight so that perked up the plants a bit. I hve four o'clocks in partial shade (morning sun, afternoon dappled shade) that have reached over 6 feet in height! They are gorgeous and are covered in flowers and, of course, the fragrance at night is heavenly. However, I know a good stiff wind will knock them down. I never collect the seeds, just let them fall and reseed. My cypress vine isn't blooming yet either and I think it is a little late this year, so I guess we have to blame the weather.....I bet we will have blooms soon though. I am not terribly surprised you have a yellow pear volunteer plant as yellow pear seems especially prone to volunteer. My volunteers usually come up in pathways and I have to move them, but I love seeing them come up. You never know what you will get....and some great tomatoes have been 'discovered' from either volunteer seedlings or crossed seed saved and planted the following year. I have volunteer pumpkin vines growing on the fence around the guinea pen. They seemed to come out of nowhere about 3 weeks ago (in almost full shade) and are growing like mad (trying to find sunlight?) and are already blooming. I don't know if they will make any pumpkins since they are in so much shade. I have volunteer sunflowers in the dog yard and around the compost pile, a volunteer tomato plant in another compost pile--I think the fruit look like Marianna's Peace--and tiny volunteer tomato plants in the veggie garden. There seem to be more volunteers than usual which I attribute to the weather. The Grandpa Ott's morning glories reseeded themselves from last year and are growing like crazy on the fence on the west side of the garden. The purple hyacinth beans climbing the porch posts are blooming. I am seeing both balck-chinned hummers and ruby-throated hummers, although not in huge numbers. The pond is full of frogs.....frogs, frogs, frogs everywhere. Between them and the tree frogs and the katydids, it is almost too loud at night to sleep! We are seeing quite a lot of non-venomous snakes and, for once, not seeing venomous ones. Yippee! I have virginia creeper everywhere, so thought I might see some virginia creeper sphinxes, but haven't. We have had quite a few clearwings. We have a billion dragonflies and (FINALLY) no mosquitoes. I am harvesting peppers and tomatoes like crazy, and the herbs are all huge monsters....well,except for the dill and parsley which are being devoured by the cats. I am starting to get a few large pumpkins here and there, but the melons are still quite small. Everything that has been blooming all summer continues to bloom: zinnias, cosmos, 4 o'clocks, verbena bonariensis, marigolds, salvias in red, orange, white, purple, coral and blue, veronica, black-eyed susan vine, daturas (several different ones), pentas, scarlet runner beans, Chaco Canyon runner beans, sedum, begonias, cannas, tansy, catmint, nasturtiums, mexican heather, hibiscus coccinus, swamp mallow, portulaca, honeysuckle, crossvine, yellow and orange-flowered trumpet creeper, and sunflowers. The pastures are full of blooms too, and I won't try to name them all, but all the usual summer prairie wildflowers are blooming, especially the partridge pea, black-eyed susans, Mexican hat, greenthread daisies and asters. The native goldenrods, autumn sage and blazing starts aren't blooming yet, but they are about to bloom. The milkweeds have all gone to seed as have a lot of the spring bloomers. Can you believe it is the end of July already? Dawn

Unfortunately ticks do not do much, if any, damage to native plants and therefore native plants have not evolved any means to repel them. There are non-native herbs and forbs that are unappealing to them and may discourage them from taking up residence in your yard (which also are slightly effective for mosquitoes as well). These include: ⢠Citronella grass ⢠Garlic ⢠Lavender ⢠Lemon balm ⢠Mexican marigolds (Tagetes erecta) ⢠Mint (Mentha) ⢠Pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) ⢠Pyrethrum (type of chrysanthemum) ⢠Rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) ⢠Rue (Ruta graveolens) ⢠Sage (Salvia officinalis) ⢠Wormwood (Artemesia absinthium) Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/10/04/3250084/some-plants-repel-ticks.html I don't know how effective these plants actually are but they do provide an alternative source of nectar and pollen for bees and butterflies. I have yellow finches that LOVE the lavender seeds too.