Daily Home Renovation Tips

Sounds like an episode out of a Flash Gordon movie series, doesn’t it? Perhaps I should say ‘Houston, we have a problem’?

OK, OK, it’s not life threatening for three courageous astronauts. But, oh, our beautiful back yard!

This is the first spring in our current home. We moved in last summer. Our home is situated on a ravine which means that our back yard backs onto a forest. Here is the view in the winter.

Last year we had two situations before we installed the chain link fence (to enclose the back yard for our dog) where parts of the grass was dug up.

We thought it must have been raccoons. And, once the fence was put up it in the very late fall it did not happen again.

However, it has now happened three times in the past 2 weeks.

Here is what someone or something has done to our back yard.

John, my father in-law said that it must be moles. We had never heard about it. I imagine moles to have been like gophers which make holes in the ground. There were no holes.

However, sure enough. I went to a store near us and then confirmed that it was likely moles. A customer over heard me talking to the sales lady said that he had heard that mole problems were worse this year than in many past years.

The sales lady (as did Cath) said that the moles were likely looking and finding chinch bugs. July is when the lawn care people can use their application to kill the chinch bugs larvae. However, we moved into the house in August so were too late. And, yes, last fall the lawn care firm we use did show us chinch bugs in our lawn.

Now, I don’t want to kill the moles (unless that is the only way). But, oh my beautiful lawn.

There was a few products which were power like substances which would discourage moles. But we have a large back yard for such a solution.

Then I came across a product I had never come across previously (likely because I had never encountered a mole problem before).

Return tomorrow to see what the product is and how we are using it. To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 2.