I’m dying to show some pictures but the latest blog-platform update doesn’t seem willing to do anything but straight text so far. But my amaryllises are starting to bloom–21 stalks’ worth! Something to look forward to, anyway.
Meantime. Last Christmas Trader Joe’s was selling ornamental brooms of branches of the cinnamon plant. They smelled heavenly, they were only a few bucks, and I bought one.
I didn’t read the tag till I got home, though–it warned not to let it touch the paint on the walls or this surface or that or that and I wondered how I got myself into this? But hey, cinnamon. I kept it.
I would later read that it’s a natural pest repellant: critters don’t like it and ants will avoid it.
I found ants crawling up my baby cherry tree a few weeks ago and as my friend Phyllis points out, they bring mites that damage the trees to farm them for food. When we bought this house it had an elderly cherry tree dying of an infestation.
I put that broom across the rim of the big plant pot and the ants vanished and did not come back. The tree looks great.
I wished I had more of those branches, although the obvious thing is that of course in effect I do, I have a big Costco thing of cinnamon sticks, that should do, too.
In the last two days I found two clamshells and six peaches downed around my early peach and needed to do something, stat, before I lost the rest. Oh wait, the cinnamon broom! Put it where there’s actually going to be a crop. So tonight it is resting against the peach trunk and I’m hoping that that skunk that announced itself last night (probably while arguing with the raccoons over my fruit) will think it has met its smelly match.