I'm an avid orchid grower and a few odds and ends thrown in. I use cinnamon for all cuts and 'rotting' spots or damage spots. Cinnamon will burn orchid roots. I don't care to spray for anything. It just goes everywhere and then there are the airborne particles to contend with. I go with a drench. I use Merit 75, which is expensive but will last me a lifetime. I use it as a drench. 1/8 teaspoon to a gallon of water and drench the soil/medium. Now, I have used it on orchids and hoyas and succulents. But not on anything else. This year, I will be applying it to all my plants which will include the arrow leaf plant, table palms, coffee plant, bird of paradise, and a few others (sorry I have no specific names for my plants). I also relate this as I do not know if there are plants sensitive to this product. I drench by watering the plants medium/soil once a week for three weeks in a row and an extra week if I have mealies. The plants take the product up through their roots and into all parts. The insect bites and takes the toxin into its system and dies. You don't have to worry that you have not 'gotten' all the parts nor do you have to worry about scale on the roots or hidden on the plant. No dripping leaves, or wet walls/floors or airborne particles. All in one place - the soil and IN the plant.

FWIW, in my experience, manzanita foliage or wood does NOT have a distinctive odor sweet or otherwise. are you sure that you might not have a myrtus/"true myrtle" plant instead (it's foliage does have a sweet scent to it)?

As far as ants go...I was able to purchase the last bag of diazanon granuals at a local nursery the year that it was put on the banned list. I sprinkle a little on the ant hill as if I was salt and peppering it and the next day when I come back to see, there is no sign of any ants. All dead. With our acreage being on the top of the valley I find that there are a lot of ants that think that living in the valley just isn't good enough anymore and need to find a new home on my acreage somewhere. Each year in the middle of July I will find a migration of ants happening. Two nights ago I saw one batch of red ants going east to west across the yard and the night before that one group of 1/2 red, 1/2 black ants going from the northwest to the southeast. The ants will carry eggs with them and seem to know exactly where they are going. If I step in their way they go around me and keep on going, even if I step in the way of the leaders. There are thousands and thousands of them, making a foot wide path and they seem to be on a mission because they are going as fast as their little legs can carry them. It is very interesting to watch. The other night I followed the last ant across the yard and into the bush on the other side. Boy, do they go a long ways...and who knows where they started from. Here I have all sizes of ants from the iddy biddy to the large carpenter (I think) ants, and colors from red to black. The large ones have put occasional holes into the wooden tree stepping stones that my DH cut for me to use as a pathway. Diazanon works for them too. Brenda

I remember reading a short story in college (a long time ago...) that said the only way to avoid chigger bites was to run through the field naked. Idk, haven't done it, but they love me. I may be the only one out of 3 or 4 people in the exact same area who ends up with bites. I have found only one spray that kept them off of me and I let a friend use it for her freaking mosquitoes. I don't know why mosquitoes don't really like me, but chiggers LOVE me. Is there any known reason why some people are more likely to get chiggers VS mosquitoes? Or, am I the only fortunate one? One thing that a friend of mine swears by, and he mows lawns for his employment, is sticking dryer sheets in his socks. He looks odd, but he says he gets no chigger bites by doing this. I don't trust it, but anyone else had luck with this? Or even hearts of it?