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Near my condo along the driveway there are were two rather large, pleasant looking shrubs (old photo here), but over the last two years they’ve become increasingly sickly, and this year they simply failed to grow. The one furthest from my house is shown above, and the one next to my bedroom can be seen here. This evening I found myself sufficiently tired of seeing the dead sticks coming out of the ground and decided to replace them.

Armed with a Pulaski that I keep around for trail work I put on steel toe boots and headed out to remove the stumps. All of this wasn’t needed, as with a gentle wiggle and a slight tug I was able to remove the bulk of each one; no tools needed. A little bit of work with the adze end of the tool helped remove the decayed roots, and after a bit of raking it’s as if they disappeared.

Tomorrow Danielle and I will look for some replacement shrubs, likely something that grows 6′ – 8′ high and around 4′ – 6′ wide so that it’ll nicely fill that space. A plant which flowers would be nice, but something like a burning bush might do nicely as well.

Over the last week there’d been an increasing number of fruit flies in the house, which I originally blamed on a plantain which Danielle had purchased a week ago. I suspect that by the time it was placed in the under-counter compost bin there were fruit fly eggs in the skin of the plantain, and it’s likely that others eggs were laid in the normal garbage can.

Friday morning when I opened the compost bin to deposit coffee grounds I was greeted by a liberal sprinkling of small, wriggling maggots, pupae (as seen above), and a fair number of flies which immediately took flight. The container was quickly sealed back up and placed in the garage to be dealt with later. This morning when throwing away coffee grounds the normal garbage can was found to contain another illustration of the fruit fly life cycle, so it was time to take action.

Every fruit fly-containing bag was sealed inside of a larger garbage bag which had it’s top folded over and sealed especially well. Each can was scrubbed with painfully hot water and sodium percarbonate and left to dry in the garage, and I used isopropyl alcohol to entrap and kill any lingering flies. There is a black foam activated charcoal filter located in the top of the compost bin, despite the cleaning with hot water I suspect that it too may have live eggs in it. Fruit flies have a relatively short lifecycle, so I’ll leave it in the garage for a few days then clean it again, keeping an eye out for larvae.

Since this afternoon’s cleaning and extermination efforts I haven’t been pestered by flying insects I think that I’ve won war on fruit flies in the house. I guess I’ll know in a week.