Stillsummer Vector Care · Honeybrook & the Tassel meadows · Integrated mosquito & tick programs since 2016
You cannot fog your way to a yard you trust. You can earn one.
A mosquito is a water report with wings. Dump the water and the report stops writing itself.
The bite-free evening, in writing
Every program carries it: if a treated yard’s evening bite count, taken on our own ten-minute sweep, does not fall by nine-tenths inside two visits, the third is free and the program is re-designed from the water map. We would rather lose an argument than a summer.
Dump it — the source audit
The gutter with a slow low spot, the tarp over the woodpile, the saucer under the pot, the tire behind the shed: a mosquito needs a half-inch of still water and ten days. The audit maps every one, dumps what can be dumped, and dunks what cannot — the cheapest kills of the whole season.
Treat the water that stays
Bacterial larvicides — a toxin that belongs to soil bacteria, harmless to dogs, birds, frogs and the pond fish — dunks and bits into the ditches, the French drain and the stock tank. Larvae never become the evening’s problem, and nothing with a backbone notices.
Break the tick’s ride
Tick tubes of permethrin-treated cotton where the mice that carry nymphs nest: the mouse dozes the cotton into its bedding, the tick picks up the dose, the spring nymph season quietly collapses. The meadows’ quietest, most effective half-hour of work there is.
The vector calendar
The season, kept
April
The water map
Snowmelt and the first warm rain: every ditch, saucer, tank and gutter walked, mapped and dumped or dunked. Every mosquito this yard suffers in July was standing water somebody could have carried away in April.
Mid-May
The tick tubes & the nymph watch
Tubes out at the stone walls and the meadow edge as the mouse nests thicken; the first nymph sweep with a flag and a sheet, because the May nymph is the one that bites the dog and the toddler, and it is the one the tubes remove.
June
The barrier, earned
Only now the residual: the shade line, the deck’s underside, the hedge’s interior — where adults rest by day — applied as a targeted band, never a fog over the yard. Bees forage in the light; the treatment lives in the shade.
July
The peak, managed
The evening bite-count sweeps begin — a ten-minute stand on the lawn with a counter, written down — and the season’s honest ledger starts: water re-audited after every storm, dunks refreshed, the barrier touched only where the counts say so.
September
The second nymph season
The meadows’ forgotten hazard: autumn nymphs riding the leaf litter and the woodpile. Tubes refreshed, the leaf-edge treated, and the yard that was earned in spring enters winter with nothing waiting in it.
Services & rates
The season card
Season rates off last year’s Honeybrook book, meadow-edge lots to town lawns. Every program opens with the water map, the counts are written down all season, and no line on this card has ever been sold as a substitute for dumping the saucer under the flowerpot.
The Yard Program — seasonal$580 / season
Water map in April, tubes in May, targeted barrier June to September, storm re-audits
The Evening Rescue — intensive$240 / event
For the wedding, the reunion, the graduation party: source dump, larvicide and barrier on a three-week runway
The Meadow Edge — tick only$310 / season
Tick tubes spring and fall, nymph flag counts, leaf-litter barrier at the mowing line
The Pond & Paddock plan$26 / visit
Stock tanks, ditches and troughs on a dunk calendar, with fish-safe biologicals only
The Storm Audit$85
After any big rain: the water map re-walked, containers re-dumped, counts re-taken
The Bite-Count Sweepincluded
Our ten-minute evening census, written into your file — the number the guarantee hangs on
Honeybrook & the Tassel meadows, 2025 — 2026
Yards that came back
Six programs from last season — the photographs are of evenings, which is the point of the entire enterprise.
The meadows, in figures
Three summers of chemical fogging by the last company, and the mosquitoes came back every fourteen days like a subscription. Stillsummer spent an April afternoon with a map and a wheelbarrow — the tarp, three saucers, a gutter low spot — and then treated a band of shade you could point at. The difference is not chemistry; it is that somebody finally dumped the water.
Our daughter’s birthday is late June and the meadow edge made it a no-go zone for three years. Tubes in May, a flag count we were shown, one targeted treatment on the hedge — and this year the party ran past dusk with the kids in the grass. Ruth’s counter sweep at 7:40 read four bites in ten minutes. We keep that number on the fridge.
The wedding rescue was booked on three weeks’ notice and it began, of all things, with the couple emptying flowerpot saucers alongside the founder. The evening of the rehearsal dinner the marquee lawn was still and the photographs have people in them smiling rather than swatting. The pond downstream was full of frogs, which was the part the grandmother cared about.
Questions from the porch
Why won’t you just fog the whole yard?
Because a fog treats every cubic foot of air the evening holds and works for days, not weeks — it kills the adults present, touches none of the water producing the next ten thousand, and puts product on the flowers the bees work at the same hour. The targeted band on the shade line, where adult mosquitoes actually rest, plus the water the larvae actually breed in, does more with a tenth of the chemistry — and it keeps working between visits.
Is any of it safe around the dog, the pond, the bees?
The larvicides are bacterial and soil-derived — the label’s environmental page reads like a nature documentary, and the pond fish never notice. The tick tubes put permethrin where mice nest, not where anything drinks. The barrier band is applied to shade and hedge interiors at bee-safe hours and concentrations, off the flowers entirely. Your pond gets dunks; your dog gets a yard; the bee question is answered by where the product lives, not by reassurance.
Ticks — what actually reduces them?
Three things in order: the tubes that dose the mice carrying most nymphs, the two-season timing that hits May and September when nymphs quest, and the mowing line — the tick waits at the leaf-litter edge for a host to brush past, so a yard-edge discipline matters as much as a tube. Deer fencing helps where it exists; the myth that sprays alone clear a meadow edge does not survive a flag count, which is why we count.
What if the counts do not fall?
Then the creed pays out: inside two visits on the program, if the ten-minute sweep has not fallen by nine-tenths, the third visit is free and the program is rebuilt from the water map — usually because a neighbour’s tyre or a woods-pool the first audit could not reach has been breeding the whole time, and the re-design says so out loud. Nine yards in ten fall on schedule; the tenth gets the work, not the shrug.
When is it too late in the season to start?
April is the cheapest month and September the second-cheapest — the water map and the autumn tubes — but the program starts whenever the phone rings, because the counts are written from the first visit either way. A yard that starts in July starts with a rescue and graduates to a program; the calendar forgives, the water map never forgets.
The 2027 water maps are drawn in April · evening counts written all season · (555) 039-7742 · yard@stillsummer.example
Take back the evening
Tell us about the water — ditches, tanks, the tarp, the neighbour’s tyres — and about the bites: where, when, on whom. The water map opens every program, the first sweep is written down, and the guarantee is on the page the whole season. yard@stillsummer.example