Today you get a "twofer" - something funny and something heartfelt. First, the fun.
So, in the seemingly endless saga of pesky creatures, many of whom have a propensity towards buzzing and stinging, we have a new chapter. Let me just say, I am NOT the girl who kicked the hornet's nest. My husband on the other hand...
We have a hollow stump in the flower bed next to our garage. It is rather picturesque, and in the first couple weeks we lived here I contemplated planting flowers in it. So I went over and had a look, bent over the stump and peered in. It was surprisingly deep, and also - inhabited. There was a hornet's nest or something like it, of a pretty good size. But not a lot of bees or whatever they were, so I thought maybe they had moved on. Oh contraire, Pierre. It was just evening, and apparently they are restful in the evening. The rest of the time, they became increasingly active and irritable. I walked out a couple nights ago and was surrounded by 8-10 of them swirling around my head, following me. NOT GOOD. We have covered this before. Definitely. Not. Good.
So my husband put a screen over the top of the stump during their "quiet time" that night. Predictably, the next morning, yesterday, they were PISSED OFF. BIG TIME. So, in a burst of complete and total irrationality, my husband REMOVED THE SCREEN. This is supposed to make them happier? They will forgive all and we all live happily ever after? Noooooo.
So, not knowing about the screen removal, I was in the house showering and heard my husband outside in the back (the stump is in the front) getting the grill going. I stepped out of the shower a few minutes later and heard other, stranger, noises emanating from the backyard. It couldn't be. It was. THE SHOP VAC.
Now, you have to understand there is a story that is part of the lore of my husband's family, that I head many more times than once over the years. In this story, his father, my otherwise pretty sensible and level-headed father in law, decided to remedy the problem of hornets or bees in the attic by attempting to suck them all up in the vacuum cleaner. Suffice it to say, this was less than a resounding success. There was personal injury involved, and not to the persons of the bees.
So why, I ask, why in the name of all that is holy, would my husband - who is UBER-reasonable under normal circumstances - even consider trying anything similar? But, he did. He is out there waving the nozzle of the shop vac all around the BBQ grill sucking up hornets right and left and soundly annoying the ones he missed. I yell out the window, something calming, something on the order of, say, "WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?" I can't honestly say this improved the situation, but he did stop sucking them up a few minutes later, with no apparent loss of personal well-being. I guess it was just a small contingent, not the whole population of the stump, which would have been terrible to behold.
A few minutes later he comes in the house and announces he has a new problem. There are lots of very much alive hornets inside the shop vac. He had been, apparently, counting on the vortex tearing their wings off and killing them. Nope. Wings still on. Coated heavily in the dust adherent to the filter, but very much alive. I think they escaped when he opened the vac and took out the filter. Don't even start me on how brilliant THAT plan was.
Anyway, some hours later, we had again achieved the quiet time of the nest and were trying to decided how to "take care of it." When I saw hubby heading that way with a little aerosol spray can of wasp and hornet spray, I put that plan down straight away. I could not see holding a spray can down inside the stump stirring up trouble. I was more in favor of, shall we say - "Shock and Awe." So a combination of diesel fuel and a little gasoline was poured into the stump and a match tossed in.
Nice bonfire. Very effective. Burned a good little while. And not a single hornet came out. SO now we are wondering if they overheard us talking and all removed to another location in the hours between the Shop Vac Incident and the Bombing of Berlin. I figure we will find out unexpectedly, at the worst possible time. Sigh. Stay tuned.
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Now for the heartfelt.
So we reeeeeaaaalllly love living here. We do not own it, we have a lease purchase arrangement, and have just been hoping we could find a way to actually grow something we can make a little money with, to help us eventually buy this farm. There are a lot of blackberries, we thought about that. We have considered beef cattle on a small scale. We have an old filbert orchard, but we didn't think it was producing, and while I was hoping we could encourage those trees to do something I was afraid it was going to be a long, difficult, and expensive process.
This morning I took a walk to pick berries. The blackberry season won't last a lot longer, I want to enjoy them, and hopefully get some jams made. So I started up a path alongside the pastures, with berry vines along the other side of the path. Picking my way along the bushes, suddenly there were apples. LOTS of apples. It was an unexpected bonus, and just when I was marveling at the bounty of fruit on this place, I reached the orchard. And looking down as I set the berry bucket on the path, there were filberts. EVERYWHERE. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. The ground was littered and the trees laden. It was like a revelation, that maybe, just maybe, we can make this old place work. And as I stood there in the row of filbert trees counting my blessings, I looked down the row and there was a large doe, still as a statue and breathtakingly perfect.
When you find yourself weeping with joy in the middle of an overgrown filbert orchard at 8 in the morning, you know you have found your life. Now I just have to figure out how to keep it.
But I think it just may work. And I am sooooooo looking forward to it.
Thanks for reading.
When we moved to the home in which we raised our children, the first year our little boy and the neighbor little boy discovered a nest about the size of a large helium balloon in a tree they were attempting to climb (they were 5 year old little boys!) This nest hung so low that I have no idea how the "lawn ranger" was not attacked during a mowing session.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I happen to be married to a Biology teacher, who knows about these things. He did wait until about 9:00 PM (they return to the nest at evenfall) and then he did spray---massively!!!!!
Being a sensible sort, he did wait until the next day to check on the matter, was completely covered, long-sleeves and long pants and took down the nest. Before placing it in the burn barrel, we did take a picture. Then we burned it and a couple of them did escape but not enough to repopulate, at least that year.
We had regular years of nests and they favored trees with heavy, fat leaves, the better to hide themselves with. One nest was constructed outside our daughter's window and we literally could see it built from the core outward. Very interesting, but we zapped that one too.
One of the kids found this piece of knowledge which I have never been able to substantiate anytime since. If the nests were built close to the ground it was going to be a cold winter. Presumably they would stay warmer than being in the top of a tree, susceptible to all kinds of wind? I don't know, but I can say this: without exception it was true.