Confession of turning to Chemicals & a Story of Yucky things

Warning: If you cannot handle reading about Ticks, I advise you NOT to read this post.

So, we have an Organic Garden.  We are always looking for ways to improve our soil, since as you know, growing the soil improves the health and vigor of the plants.  We asked the gardener who comes to mow our lawn to bring us the next door neighbor's lawn trimmings in the spring. The neighbor's backyard is a "whatever grows" situation. Before the seeds set on the weeds, the gardener threshed the foot-high "meadow" from our neighbor and brought it to our yard. In order to keep our newly de-paved soil from turning into crack bare ground, we decided to spread the threshed grasses all over the 20'x20' area.

BAD mistake.... Unbeknownst to us, the neighbors dogs had ticks!!! LOTS of dog ticks! And LOTS came on those grasses! So, our poor doggy Happy was covered with ticks! YUCK!!! We tried all kinds of natural remedies. We tried Neem Oil, Diatomaceous Earth, Beneficial Nematodes (they eat the eggs in small hatchlings in the soil), Organic Sprays with Cedar Oil, we even tried Tea-tree Oil. (Which turns out to be toxic to dogs! So don't use it on your pets!  Fortunately, we didn't put much on Happy before we found out)I even purchased this:

http://www.natural-wonder-pets.com/natural-flea-control.html?gclid=CN3UkK_AyaMCFQdB6wod8nnquA

But it didn't work!  I sent it back and asked for a refund.

The only good thing was, the ticks didn't seem to have any interest in sucking human blood.  We groomed Happy from head to tail every day and we'd pick out dozens of ticks each day. It was nasty. They just seemed to keep multiplying as the days went on. Tiny ticks started to attach to Happy's ears, ticks so small you almost need a magnifying glass... NOTHING seemed to work so, after weeks of trying to battle it organically, we just had to resort to Permethrin. (Advantage)....sigh... It worked.

So, we have an Organic Garden.. or we used to... I wonder how badly this is going to affect our natural insect predators. We keep Happy out of our raised veggies beds.  Do you have any stories like this? How soon can I start calling my Garden "organic"? I feel like a traitor...

lots of new compost!

Here's all the smaller branches that were cut from the Pepper tree, in the back mound, and the front spread is all the lawn we dug up for the apple tree areas. We're letting them dry out some before we throw them into our large pit we dug in the former pond area. Happy the dog(golden retriever/cocker spaniel mix) is checking out the grass thinking this would be a great bed! Later on, when the grass was dried out, Happy and Lori (the cat) were found sleeping on the "hay", then Happy decided to poop on it. Geez pooping on your own bed...dogs...