Today I army crawled through the desert!

Okay, so it wasn't today, but that sounded better than; Recently I army crawled in the desert. And it wasn't really the desert, but there were some similarities. It was very dry, dusty and dirty. When I showered afterwards I had to wash my hair twice! It was hot, but actually it wasn't. The humidity levels had dropped and it was rather nice out, unless you're army crawling in the desert. There were threats all around. Spiders, silverfish, bugs... There was desert wildlife; camels! Well, camel crickets. Hate them. I don't really know what an army crawl is, but I crawled lots. Kneeled and did the worm too. My core and arms were rendered useless afterwards. So, can you guess what I was doing?

 

I was knocking a biggie off my forever long house and yard to-do list. I was cleaning out under my front porch. It's a big porch. The width of the house and maybe 7' deep. There was a TON of wood under there. Crazy amount of wood and I did not want to encourage termites, so finally after 12 months I got it removed. Unfortunately it's still on the property. I moved it to the backyard and suppose I'll slowly throw some of it away and some of it I'll burn. A few pieces were good and I've kept as scrap lumber. 

 

In addition to a bunch of scrap lumber, old trim and who knows what wood, I found; 2 dead squirrels, a big old Sears mower attachment to catch grass (I guess that's what it was), two big circles of old wire (looked like barb wire but without the barbs), some brackets for attaching wood to other wood (decking), an old door thingy (looks kind of like a tar gun, but it's what opens and holds open the door), some odd (to me) cinder type bricks (I hadn't ever seen ones shaped like these before), two really heavy metal L things (they were maybe 3' and HEAVY), some trash, screws and a rabbit nest. 

 

There was so much more pulled out than shown in the pictures. I was too hot and dirty to take more pictures. 

I spread diatomaceous earth under there to kill the bugs and spiders. This stuff is good stuff. It'll kill spiders, silverfish, roaches, fleas, crickets, etc. If you get the food grade kind, it's safe for use around children, pets and poultry. I found it at Orschelns. Three quarters of my house sits on a basement, the remainder quarter is a crawl space. I plan to dust it and the garage with diatmaceous earth. It's safe for use in the garden, but will kill both bad and good bugs, so I haven't used it there. I have so few bees coming to my garden, I wouldn't want to do anything to harm them.  Oh and hopefully no one ever has to deal with this, but it is effective against bedbugs. 

It took me far longer that I expected and I have two lumps under my knees from kneeling and crawling on all kinds of stuff, but it's so good to have that behind me and to have had no signs of active termites. It was especially nice to have nice weather at the end of July to do it!