trapping earwigs and keeping dogs safe

Penny and I go out to the garden each night after dinner. I don't know when this routine started, but I do know she's got me well-trained. A few lengthy stares from her have me getting to my feet and unlocking the back door.

Penny inspects the garden and has a wee, and I look for slugs and snails and destroy them! We garden organically, so I use the collect-and-squash method. But what about those earwigs that are eating our baby plants? It's been quite a dilemma, because the little critters are too quick to be collected, and I'm too squeamish to stand on them, anyway.

Well, here's our new earwig trap, just set up today, as per the instructions on Deep Green Permaculture. 

Given that the ingredients are soy sauce, oil and water, with a drop of detergent to break the surface tension, I thought the instructions to cover the trap were timely. I've used a heavy bit of paver, hoping that Penny, who loves oily food, won't be inclined to push the paver aside and taste the bait in the trap.

The whole kit and caboodle is surrounded by the flimsy fence I put up when I buried lots of delicious rotten bokashi compost in this area, so I hope that will be an extra deterrent to Penny. She's good about respecting barriers. Well, usually...

organic is best for dogs and for humans

Whenever possible, we buy organic, for our own health and for the sake of the planet, so I was pleased to see a new range of organic dog biscuits in our local supermarket. They're called Biopet Organic dog bones and they contain only good things, as far as I can judge, though of course there's the question of feeding dogs grain products.

The manufacturers are Australian and say on their site they try to source reginal produce. (They're in in Bellingen on the Mid North Coast of NSW.)

I brought the box home, emptied the biscuits into a jar, fed one biscuit to Penny and threw the empty carton into the recycling pile.

Hmmm...I think they taste nice. Penny spent the next few minutes checking that the carton was definitely empty.