Bats? Hummingbirds? A new solution! Keep those mosquitos away with blue paint!

Sitting on your front porch swatting away those mosquitos?  That's what we were doing when our daughter Karoun (who used to live in the Woodland Heights section of Houston, Texas), was visiting us at the cabin on top of Wilbraham Mountain."Why not paint the ceiling of your porch blue?" she asked. Our question back was, "Why paint the ceiling of our porch blue?"

Her answer? "I lived in the 'original suburb' of a now very sprawling Houston.  The neighborhood is called  the Woodland Heights and is filled with the cutest Arts and Crafts bungalows.  The better the bungalow, the bigger the porch!   The traditional way to paint the ceiling of the porch is in a shade of sky blue.  They say that it keeps the mosquitos  away.  I'm not sure if it was a tradition simply handed down through generations, or if it actually works.  The idea is that the mosquitos (even bees) stay closer to the recreated "sky" of the porch rather than the chairs and people on the porch. . ." 

Sky blue ceiling of front porch on Main Street, Rockport, Massachusetts

We might gather, then, from this bit of Texas  lore, that in order to have a mosquito free spring, summer (if anyone sits outside on porches in Houston in the summer anymore) and fall, Houston folks must paint their porch ceilings a special shade of blue.  Or did those houses in Woodland Heights (unbeknownst to their neighbors) discourage mosquitos  by currying the favor of local bats and hummingbirds, i.e., by installing bat houses and hummingbird feeders in their back yards? Whatever the case, today, on Main Street in Rockport, Massachusetts, look what Marash Girl saw! A very long front porch with, yes, a sky blue ceiling, and . . . . no mosquitos!