“Anything we can do about the mosquito factory next door?”

Photo by PoPville flickr user quemac

“Dear PoPville,

Our next door neighbor’s entire backyard is a giant farm/garden. From what we gather, this is something they’ve been doing for a long, long time. In theory, we find this really impressive. I love urban farming!

However, in practice, it is less awesome. They keep a giant, open storage container/tub of water in the backyard.

I’m not sure what it is used for (it looks like compost tea, maybe?) but it is always there and full of water. They also have a lot of other various things throughout the yard that contain standing water.

As a result, our backyard is literally swarming with mosquitos. A 2 minute trip out there to put the trash in the alley recently led to SEVEN bites before I made it back inside.

We could treat our yard, but I suspect it would have very little impact. We could also spray ourselves every time we step outside, but we have a 6 month old who slobbers all over us so we would rather not be covered in insect repellent.

Any thoughts or advice? What would others do in our situation? Is there anything we *can* do?”