Today is Sunday, which I try to keep as a quiet day of rest, but of course, the morning rounds must be done.
After putting kibble out for the yard cats, I paused to enjoy some of the flowers that have come up in the old kitchen garden.
Though we covered the entire area with cardboard and mulch, some things have managed to come through. Like there cheerful yellow flowers that have come up near the rain barrel.
A whole bunch of these white ones have come up near the sun room window.
Then I got joined by a beautiful, furry flower!
Who insisted in being carried for most of my rounds! :-D
While one of the goals of mulching this area was to kill off some of the more invasive plants my mother had introduced, I’m not too worried about what’s coming up now. The weeds and quack grass are much easier to pull out, with such a deep layer of mulch, and the flowers have been coming up very strong and healthy. The other goal for this area is to level it off to the retaining wall, so we’re focusing on adding material at the end furthest from the house, and leaving all these flowers to grow. Eventually, this will be a kitchen garden, for herbs and vegetables that we tend to use the most, but there is no hurry on that. It’ll be done in stages, and as I figure out what flowers are there, and which I want to keep, I can transplant them to other areas.
For now, we will enjoy the flowers where they are. :-)
Including furry ones that follow me around and give love and cuddles!
The kittens have taken to napping under the couch regularly. Beep Beep can just barely squeeze under there, herself. A little while ago, my daughter saw her squeeze part way there, then start wiggling oddly. Moments later, some sleepy kitties came out. She then flopped on the floor for them to nurse. She actually woke them up for lunch! :-D They’re more than old enough to be weaned, but it’s still great bonding time. :-)
My daughter got the broken flexible pipe replaced. She did just the one for now.
The other has been left for now, partly to make sure the cold water is working fine and there are no leaks. With the hot water, there is at least a shut off valve at the hot water tank. When we replaced the tank shortly after moving here, the plumber added one on for us. When it’s time to replace the other piece, only the hot water to the house will need to be shut off, and not all the water.
For some reason, the copper pipes are painted, including the end of the flexible hose. My daughter tells me the pipes to the old sink in the entry way, which now supply water to the washing machine, were also painted.
Why paint copper??
As for me, I headed outside for a last bit of mowing.
That’s 4 days of mowing, now, and I’m skipping some places!
I did do an extra bit, though.
I mowed a path to and around the old Farm Hand tractor. Next, we’ll be going in there with the weed trimmer. Once we can access the tractor, we need to cut away the trees that are growing through it. We aren’t able to maintain the tractor itself, but we can at least prevent some types of damage to it!
For the last couple of summers, I’d been able to keep an area to the back gate mowed, large enough to drive through. This year, between the rain and the heat, I just never made it that far.
Today, after mowing the area in front of the storage shed, I decided to mow a path to the back gate. It’s our “emergency exit”, so I don’t want to leave it entirely.
A path, however, is all I was up to!
I cranked the mower up as high as it can go – which is higher than the riding mower can go – and only managed a path twice the width of the mower itself. I actually took 8 passes, just to get it as good as this! The first pass, I had the front wheels up almost the whole way, just to get the height down enough to not choke out the mower.
My daughter suggested it would probably be easier to use the old scythe in the garden shed, instead of a mower, for this stuff! She’s probably right. This is hay that’s being cut! Heck, if we had the equipment (well… working equipment), we could probably get a couple of large round bales just in this section! :-D
I’m hoping to at least keep up a path to the back gate. I don’t expect to make the wide “driveway” I’d kept clear last year. I’d hoped to do more, since the area becomes quite the fire hazard, but we just can’t keep up with it all. More time is being spent on the lawn than anything else right now. As much as I love mowing the lawn, there are other things that need to get done! Ultimately, the goal is to have less lawn, with trees in some areas, and raised garden beds in others. Maybe even a greenhouse or two. Other areas, I hope to replace the grass with moss.
Until then, though, there’s an awful lot of grass to cut!
One of the things that is quite visible when the grass is tall, is a path through the grass, worn down by cats, leading from the yard to under the storage shed. While I was working on the path to the back gate, and was turning to make another pass, I noticed Junk Pile cat, sitting in the newly mowed grass in the shade of the shed, watching me. I think her kittens might be under there. When I told my daughter about it, she said she saw them this morning! Junk Pile cat had brought them to the house for food. :-)
I look forward to seeing them more often and, hopefully, being able to socialize them at least a bit. And their mom, too!
After our incident with the kitchen pipe, yesterday, I headed into town as early as I could. Of my morning rounds, the only thing I took the time to do before I left was to make sure the outside cats had food.
There is an employee at the hardware store that I was very happy to see. Quite a few times now, I’ve been able to get help from him that went above and beyond. For all the times I’ve talked to him, he’s becoming aware of the state of the house we’re in, so he makes the effort to ask extra questions and give extra information.
This morning, I told him about what happened last night (I am extra glad I bought that box fan yesterday, because that was set up last night to dry the floor under the sink!), then showed him a piece that had come off my daughter had given me, just in case there were other types and sizes.
He’s never seen that part broken off like that before!
So he went over the different types of flexible pipes available, and I ended up getting a pair of 24 inch ones with built in shut off valves. We’ll just go ahead and replace them for both taps. He then asked if we had copper pipes, which we do, so he brought me over to a display sample in another aisle that had copper pipe in it, describing to me how to cut off the end, while popping the display piece apart to show me how it should look after abrading it…
Cut off the end. Of course, we have no cutter!
He found one for me.
Once I had the necessary bits and pieces, I picked up some other things my daughter put on the list for me – some of it are for the next time something like this happens! :-D
The down side is having to go into our contingency fund, to pay for all this. :-( But at least we have one!
Now, it’s up to my more able bodied girls to do the installation! They’re just going to wait until everyone is done using the water for a while, before shutting water for the whole house down again.
Once home again, I finished my rounds outside which, today, included using more of that anti-wasp stuff. I’d found a wasp nest in a corner of the house. We’d found one there last year, too. I’d hosed it away, and I thought they were gone, but last night I hosed it one more time, just in case.
Wasps started coming out again.
Somewhere in there is a crack, and I think they’re getting into the roof above the old kitchen.
When I checked it this morning, there was no sign of wasps, and no sign that the nest was being rebuilt, but that’s what I saw last night. I sprayed it anyway. Sure enough, wasps started falling out of… somewhere.
Thankfully, this stuff will contact kill, so any wasps that are somewhere in the crack would not be able to get out without coming in contact with the spray. I made sure not to use up the whole can so that, if I need to, I can spray again. At least a little.
Of course, in my rounds, I checked on the garden plots.
More squash are blooming. :-)
The size difference between some of these plants is rather remarkable! Some are still so tiny. I don’t know how much of that is due to the different types of squash, or to any health problems or weather damage. The first squash bed has just a few survivors, struggling to grow. This is the one that got frost damaged, even though we covered them for the night. The rest were all transplanted at the same time, so it’s more likely the differences there are due to type, not damage.
It should be interesting to see what we get out of these.
Not too long ago, I wrote about my daughters installing a new kitchen faucet. One of the issues was, we have no shut off valves. There is one main shut off valve that shuts off water to the entire house.
Today, that became a problem.
One of my daughters had gone into the basement to clean out the litter boxes, when she discovered water dripping from the cold water pipe leading to the kitchen sink.
No, the pipe was not leaking. The water was coming from above, and from the damp state of the floorboards above, it had been leaking a while.
My younger daughter started clearing out under the sink to see what was going on, while her sister and I started cleaning up in the basement.
Suddenly, the drip started dripping even faster!
Which is when the water for the house had to be shut off.
My daughter had tried to tighten the flexible pipe between the copper pipe and the tap, and it started spraying all over.
Did I mention there are no shut off valves for the sink?
It ended up falling apart, and try as they might, the girls couldn’t even rig something up to hold overnight, so we could turn the water back on.
While they were fighting with that, I went hunting in the basements. There are so many parts and pieces around, surely there must be something we could use to at least plug the pipe, so we could turn the water back on?
When we were cleaning out the basement, some things never made it to the barn. Including a box I’d shoved under the stairs. It’s full of parts and pieces of taps and faucets and pipes…
… and balls, and parts of shower heads that have never been used, and other unidentifiable things.
I also found this.
Actually, I found the box with an eyedropper and what appears to be the instruction sheet inside. I found the bottle that should have been in it, buried in the bottom of the box.
You’d think, by now, I’d no longer be surprised by the things I find in the strangest of places, but … really. Why? Why was this here??
I’ve since tucked it into a place the cats and kittens can’t get into.
Meanwhile, the girls were able to seal up the top of the cold water pipe in the kitchen, allowing us to turn the water back on to the house.
Tomorrow, I’m off to the hardware store, as soon as it opens!
I figure, we may as well replace both of the flexible hoses, which I’ve seen in kits for both hot and cold water.
Last night, while heading out to do my evening rounds, I had a little surprise – a stinky friend coming out of the sun room!
I wanted to use water from the rain barrel, but Stinky had other ideas! :-D
He is not, however, the furry friend I was alluding to in the title.
While mowing the outer yard today, I saw a little dark shape, running across from the deep grass to the pile of junk that needs to be hauled to the dump.
Then a mostly while shape followed.
Two little kittens! About the same size as the inside kittens.
I am guessing they are Junk Pile cat’s babies, but they might be Rosencrantz’s, too. I saw no mom around.
This means we might start seeing kittens show up at the food bowls soon!
Which reminds me. I noticed, a couple of days ago, that Butterscotch is no longer pregnant. After what happened with her last litter, it’s hard to guess how many will survive. :-(
Also, this evening, I won lawn mower chicken! I was doing the very last patches of grass for the night, when the mower started to stutter. I just managed to back it up over the last bit of grass when it coughed and died, completely out of fuel! :-D
While I was finishing up with the lawn (though I still have the area in front of the storage shed to do – tomorrow!), the girls tended to the gardens, including thinning out the carrots. We now have lots of little, bitty carrots to snack on. They are all new varieties for us and, so far, they all are quite tasty! :-)
This morning, before I headed into town, I had a conversation with one of my daughters. Later, when I was at the hardware store, that conversation had me looking extra hard at the display of 20 x 20 inch box fans. We need at least a couple, including one for the old basement to replace the one that disappeared.
I finally broke down and bought one.
Plus a package of 20 x 20 furnace filters.
We now have a poor-man’s air filter! :-D A furnace filter is attached to the back of the fan with a few little strips of duct tape. For now, it’s sitting on my husband’s leather working desk as we test out how it works, before deciding on a final spot to put it. This one will stay in the living room, though. Depending on how things go, I hope to pick up another when we’re in the city, for the basement window. For now, I want to see how well it does in keeping the levels of cat hair down! :-D
I also had to pick up a round file while in town. I still haven’t been able to put on the second latch on the screen window. I did find a round file in one of the miscellaneous drawers in the basement, but it’s the wrong type, and was doing absolutely nothing as I tried to enlarge the opening for the new latch post. Hopefully, this new one will do the trick.
The cats and kittens have, of course, been exploring the counters and shelves in the basement, and I’ve been finding a few things knocked to the floor. Yesterday, I found a piece of wood with a rose design carved in relief into it, lying on the floor. Today, I found another piece of wood on the floor; this one had floral designs on one side, and my late brother’s name carved on the other. I don’t recall seeing those when we cleaned up the basement before bringing Beep Beep and Butterscotch indoors. I’d forgotten my brother had tried his hand at wood carving, too, and you can see quite a skill improvement between the two pieces.
While looking for a round file, I also found a small carving tool. I recognize it as part of a set we had, when I was quite young. There were at least a dozen different types of blades in the set. In fact, I’m pretty sure the wood box it came in is what’s now under my computer monitor, raising it up to a more comfortable viewing height. That box now holds my late father’s hair cutting supplies. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the wood carving tools. Considering how long ago we had them, I’m surprised to have found the one that I did!
I set it aside for sharpening. It has a flat tip, like a very fine chisel, that I think I will find useful.
Funny how, after being here for more than 2 years, we’re still finding things like this! :-D
After taking yesterday to recover, I was feeling well enough to continue working outside today.
But first, I got to release the kitties!
:-D
They now know they are allowed to be upstairs when I open the basement door, so they and Beep Beep are all at the top step, waiting for me. As they all go rushing up, there’s an equal rush from the adults cats, going the other direction!
For now, we’re still going to keep them in the basement over night, during days when we’re not around to keep an eye on them, or if we have to go in and out of the house a lot. Keith and Fenrir in particular are not happy about the babies, so we have to keep an eye on them.
The kittens have discovered a safe place to chill out, where the big cats can’t get at them.
Well. Almost.
“If I can’t see them, they can’t see me, right?”
They are certainly entertaining!!
Once I was done my morning rounds, I headed outside to continue mowing around the old garden area.
This time, I remembered to wear my wrist brace. Much to my surprise, it was my wrist that was hurting the most, yesterday. I guess stopping to empty that clippings bag so often was just too much for it.
I really ought to get a doctor to look at that. Knowing me, I probably broke something back when I was helping my brother with patching the shed roof. :-D
One of the things I’ve noticed this year is Saskatoon bushes in places I had not noticed them before. This year is looking to be a really good year for Saskatoons. At least it would be…
I found this large Saskatoon bush among the lilac hedge while mowing. There were no Saskatoon berries here in the last two summers.
This summer, the bush is just full of berries!
None of which I’d be willing to pick and eat.
While some of the bushes have their leaves infested with insect eggs that are weakening them, this one actually looks diseased. A few of the berries look great, but most are smaller, kinda wizened looking, and some have the same spots that are on the leaves.
Such a shame.
Still, while doing my rounds this morning, I was able to gather berries from other trees that are just fine! I will have to try and remember to bring a basket or something with me for the next while, to gather them as they ripen. I’ve been lifting up the bottom of my shirt to make a pouch to hold them, which works fine – right up until I need both hands to switch out the memory cards on the trail came or something. ;-)
Once again, while mowing, I made ample use of the grass clippings. Since I was working close to them, I worked the clippings around the sunflowers.
The clippings are doing triple duty. For the smaller, late planted sunflowers, it’ll help keep them from being overgrown by grass and weeds. The mulch is part of our larger plan to build up and amend the neglected soil here, but for this area, it’s also being used to help level out the poorly plowed area.
The poor lawn mower. No matter how careful I was, I still ended up hitting lumps of rocky soil, hidden by the grass. Other times, the wheels would slide into ruts, dropping the blade onto furrows, leaving me to manhandle the machine out. I must say, I was very happy to see my daughter coming out, letting me know she had finished work for the day and could take over for me! The old garden area is the most difficult area to work on. At some point, we’re going to have to go out there with garden hoes and break apart the worst of the hills the bad plow job left behind. It would be better to use heavy equipment to level the whole area out, but we make do with what we can.
For now, the inner yard is done. Tomorrow, I’ll be checking the blade on the mower and probably giving it a sharpen, before I start working on the outer yard!
That poor little mower is really getting a workout! :-D
It was a sleepless night last night. Even with painkillers, I still hurt all over. That, on its own, would have been fine. What made it difficult is what I could only describe as a total rebellion of m body! You’ve probably heard of restless legs syndrome? That’s when you’re lying in bed, trying to relax and go to sleep, but your legs just can’t stay still. Now, imagine that, but with the whole body. It didn’t matter how tired I was, or how much pain the moving around caused, I just couldn’t stop. I think I finally fell asleep somewhere around 5am.
What I found odd, though, is that there was NO storm last night! I’d been keeping an eye on the weather radar, because there was a wide swatch of a storm system coming for us, including areas of heavy and severe weather. There was no way it was going to miss us.
And yet, it did. At one point, I checked the weather radar, and the system had passed us, and all I could think was, what happened? We didn’t even get rain or winds!
Today is looking beautiful, though. During my morning rounds, I took extra time to check on different areas, do a bit of weeding among the carrots, parsley and beets, and visit the MUCH taller sunflowers!
You can see the little, late planted, one in the foreground. :-D
I really look forward to seeing how big these guys get.
While checking the fence line along the garden, I found these.
I don’t know what these little shrubs are, and had no idea they bloomed until today! We have quite a few of them in the area.
There are also a few Saskatoon bushes in the area. We’d done a bit of clean up in the area, two summers ago, and they have gotten noticeably stronger since then, and actually producing berries now.
Breakfast! :-D
While doing my rounds, I had an internal battle going on. On the one hand, my brain was saying, “oh, the weather is so nice today! It’s a perfect time to get out the weed trimmer and clean up around the mowed areas. Then mow the old garden area. There’s also lots of Saskatoons to pick near the house.” The list went on. Meanwhile, my body is saying, “Ow. Ow. Ow. Are you kidding me? Sleep. That’s what’s on the to-do list. Sleep.”
I think my body is winning this fight.
We have, however, opened the new part basement door, which means there is an army of kittens (the 5 kittens seem more like 15! :-D ) tearing around the house – and especially my bed! – playing with the adult cats that will tolerate them, and discovering cat toys the others have long gotten tired of.
I am in so much pain right now. Chances are, I’ll hardly be able to walk tomorrow. But it was worth it!
Let’s back up a bit.
This morning, I got a call from the pharmacy, letting me know my husband’s painkillers were ready to pick up.
Oh, what wonderful news to start the day!
I skipped my morning routine, which my daughters were kind enough to do most of for me, and headed to the garage.
The first thing I did was hose down the area the wasp nest was in. They were still hanging around, but I was able to get the door open and drive out.
I left the door open. :-D
Once in town, and the prescriptions were picked up, I swung by the hardware store to look at what they had for wasp spray. I basically had only two choices: a foam type and a non-foam type. They were also both designed to be used on the nests themselves. I talked to a staff member and ended up going with the non-foam type, as it was also supposed to contact kill for some time after use. Since the next itself was already destroyed, I needed to spray the area to keep them from coming back and building a new one.
Once at home, I made sure to park in the yard, then headed for the garage with the wasp spray. I couldn’t see any wasps, though I could hear some. I closed the garage door from the outside…
… and there they were! They were bouncing right off of me. I moved away and headed for the house, figuring I would give them time to calm down, but they followed me!
I’m glad I happened to be wearing a golf shirt, with thicker fabric. At one point, I looked down and there were two wasps on my boob, stuck in the fabric, trying to sting me! I was able to pull the fabric away from my body and blow them away.
It was only later than I realized, I did get stung! Right on the boob. I never really felt anything. It took a while, but I realized why it didn’t hurt. Some 20 years ago, I had breast reduction surgery. With the amount of tissue removed, it was basically a complete reconstruction. I was warned in advance that, since nerves were being cut, I would lose some sensation, and that it might never return. I did regain most of it, but I do have areas where I don’t feel anything at all. It looks like the wasp stung me in one of those areas!
Which is… good? LOL
Since I didn’t want wasps around the house, I went back to the garage and went in through the back door. I could see some of them going through the opening in the wall, but not as many as I was hearing.
I then proceeded to spray the heck out of the area where the nest was, up to the underside of the roof peak, and along the beam on either side of where the nest was above the door.
What I didn’t count on was how quickly I’d run out. I had intended to spray the opening from the outside, but by the time I went out there, the can was pretty much empty.
When I was done spraying, I went to switch out the trail cam memory cards, which was the only part of skipped morning routine left for me to do.
I had company.
She is not meowing at me in this picture. She is hissing! Oh, what a mean kitty she is! :-D
I checked on it the garage throughout the day. I only ever saw one dead wasp on the ground. From the inside, I could see wasps land in the opening, start to come in, then leave. So they could tell that something was amiss.
By the end of the day, when I had to put the van back in the garage (we’re expecting more storms tonight), I was no longer seeing or hearing any wasps. So I hope this took care of the problem!!
Today was another hot one, but there were a few things that just needed to get done. One of them was to finally put those latches on the new basement window. With the distraction of the wasp nest, I never did get it done yesterday.
I only gone one side done, though. When I went to do the other side, I discovered the hole for the post to go into was just a bit smaller than the first one. New latches of this time all have a standard size post, no matter what size the rest of the latch is. I’ll have to find – or buy – a round file to enlarge the hole just the tiniest bit, before I can put on the new latch.
So that’s only half done.
I then had to start mowing the lawn. Between the heat and the rain, the yard had gotten really over grown. With another storm looking like it will hit tonight, decided to go for it.
For the first time since getting the new mower, I kept the bag on to keep the grass clippings for the entire time I mowed. The grass was so tall and thick in the first area I worked on, I had to empty the bag about every 50 feet or so!
In the end, I got only a small section done before I had to stop, go inside and cool down.
The best place to cool down is the basement! It was a great excuse to check on the old basement.
What a difference! The area the dehumidifier is in is almost completely dry. I checked the hose and, to be honest, I couldn’t really tell if water was dripping through there, but I’m assuming it is. The water that was all over and around the well pump, from condensation, is almost completely dry.
The section under the window is also noticeably drier, though it still had big wet patches. There are still damp spots under the furnaces, so I changed the angle on the blower fan to face the floor under there. The last thing we need is for the new electric furnace to start rusting!
My making a commotion in the old part basement attracted attention, of course. I had a whole bunch of kitties at the divider, watching me and wanting to play!
So I went around to the new part basement and joined the kitties for a while. Though I’d washed up after coming inside, my clothes probably still smelled of bug spray, so they actually left me alone a fair bit.
A few days ago, I’d started another hair pin using lilac wood. I’d roughed it out to the sanding stage, so I finished it off today.
Given the size and shape of the piece of branch I used, there wasn’t a lot of options for what to do with it. I still wanted to highlight the colours inside, so I made a simple spiral cut. This picture is after it was completed and oiled.
My daughter is ecstatic with it! :-D It’s longer than the first one I made, too, which is much better for her mass of curly hair.
By the time I was done with that, I found the kittens were all done, too!
I had hoped in this time, I would have gotten enough rest so I could go back outside and continue mowing, but it wasn’t. I ended up needing to nap! This meant I was going back outside at the hottest part of the day 28C/77F, with a real feel of about 32C/90F! Thankfully, though, the sun was low enough that the areas I needed to work on were mostly in the shade. After moving the van to where I’d already cut, the grass, I then spent several hours working on the lawn, with many, many stops to empty the grass bag.
I now have plenty of clippings to mulch the new garden area where the wood pile used to be. I added a lot around the grape vines, to help keep down the things that are trying to encroach on them. The old kitchen garden has piles all over, which the girls will spread out for me, tomorrow. When working on the north yards, I added the clippings to the compost pile already there, and it’s now full.
We need to start a new compost pile.
I love this new mower. With the frequent stops to empty the bag, it got harder and harder for me to pull on the cord to restart it. No matter how rubber my arm got, though, it started every time! With the old push mower, I would have had to stop long before finishing.
I’m so glad to finally get that done. Everything looks so much better now! I still need to go around the old garden area, then the garden area itself – today, I just mowed around the potatoes, which are coming up quite nicely – but that can wait for another day! I got the main parts done, and the rest can wait a bit longer, if the weather doesn’t co-operate.
It’s been a bit frustrating this year. As much as I appreciate the rain, between that and the heat waves, the lawn is about all we’ve been able to keep up with. I’ve barely managed to do any clean up near where we plan to build the cordwood outhouse, and we certainly haven’t been able to start on clearing where we will be building it. This year, I was supposed to continue clearing the spruce grow – I even have a working chain saw to make that job easier! We’ve done nothing.
With my husband being in the hospital for 3 weeks last spring, and so many follow up medical appointments, it’s no surprise we fell behind on this stuff last year. It’s now feeling like we’re going to lose another year, this time to weather!
Maybe we’ll have a long and mild fall to make up for lost time. Here’s hoping!
I’m just happy I managed to get done as much as I did today. I expect that tomorrow is going to be a major pain day because of it, but it was worth it to finally get this stuff done! The yard look so much better now. It’s more of a psychological boost than anything else, but those are important, too!
Since then, I’ve looked at the wound and thought, that doesn’t really look like a horsefly bite.
Maybe a spider bite? I’d been walking into spider webs at the corner of the garage door a few times. Could that be it?
Or something else?
Recently, while going through the open doorway, I heard some buzzing, but couldn’t see anything. I knew that there were old wasps nests up under the roof, near the peak, but with the garage door open, they could not be seen.
When I headed out this morning, I left the garage door open. On returning home, I pulled into the yard, so a few minutes ago, I went to put the van back in the garage. Remembering the buzzing noise, I pulled the garage door down from the inside, about half way, so that I could see under the peak of the roof.
Nope. No new wasp nests.
So I opened the door enough to duck under it, then closed it from the outside.
Where I was immediately surrounded by a cloud of buzzing insects.
Thankfully, while I felt some bounce off of me, I did not get stung as I dashed away from the door.
This is what I could see when I looked back.
Do you see where the arrow is pointing?
That’s an opening under the wood siding.
What the camera did not pick up was all the wasps, flying in and out of there.
So I went back into the garage through the back door, then turned the light on.
!!!!
That nest is big enough that every time the door was opened or closed, it hit the nest. We never saw it, since we open and close the door from the outside. When it’s closed, no one is inside to see it. When it’s open, it’s hidden from view.
No wonder I heard buzzing when the door was up, but didn’t see anything! They would all have been above the door itself.
This is not good.
Since I’d closed the van in the garage, this meant we couldn’t open the door again to take the van anywhere, without disturbing the wasps.
The nest had to go.
So I put together enough hoses that I could reach into the garage and blasted it away. When I could no longer see any sign of it left on the beam, I dragged the hose around to the front of the garage to spray the other side.
There was, however, no sign of the nest.
If you look at the top picture, you’ll see a piece of metal, bent in a right angle, along the top of the garage, This keeps the handle of the door from hitting the top of the frame. Which, I notice, is starting to sag slightly. It seems to be keeping the pieces of the nest from falling through the opening.
So I went back inside, sprayed some more in there for a while, then opened the door from the inside.
Still no sign of the nest. It looks like the pieces went for a ride with the door itself.
I sprayed the heck out of the area, anyway, then left the door open.
There are still wasps buzzing about. In fact, as I write this, I have seen a number of them that have flown high enough to be picked up by the security camera. Oh! There go a few more!
Eventually, they will go away.
For now, I’ve left the hose near the garage, and I’ll give things another spray in the morning! Just in case.
Oh! There are some more of them, flying past the security camera.
Yeah, we’ll be staying away from there for a while…
But first, I will share something to make you smile!
Upside down, furry friends.
Two Face and Dave were busily playing, with Two Face grabbing, licking and biting Dave’s head and him… letting her. :-D
At about 1am. I just had to turn on a light and get pictures. :-D
So… today’s runaround.
When my husband’s bubble packs got refilled, the pharmacy told us that one of his medications was out of refills. For some reason, this one painkiller got only a 1 month renewal. He’s actually on two versions of this painkiller; a quick release and an extended release. The extended release version was missing.
The pharmacy had faxed the clinic, but as of Saturday, there was still no response. They did have a pre-bubble pack prescription left for 6 pills. Three days worth. So I took those. My husband will be out of them again, after today.
So this morning, starting from when the clinic opened at 9, my husband tried phoning the clinic.
After more than an hour, he still hadn’t gotten through, so once I finished my rounds, I drove to the clinic.
Which is in a town 45 minutes away (as far as I know, the clinic we had been going to previously, still doesn’t have new doctors to replace the two that moved away, which is why we had to switch to a town further away).
When I got there and talked to a receptionist, telling her we couldn’t get through by phone, she was apologetic. It seems that on Mondays in particular, the doctors all have telephone appointments and use up all the lines.
I explained the problem and she looked up my husband’s file. According to what she saw, the doctor had phoned the pharmacy on Saturday. She even had a time. It was maybe an hour after I’d already stopped by the pharmacy myself!
So as far as she could tell, the pharmacy should have had a 2 month renewal for these meds.
Once I was done there, I messaged my husband and let him know, asking him to call the pharmacy while I made a quick stop at the hardware store nearby to get the latches I needed, then drove to the pharmacy. Which was another 45-50 minutes of driving, so it would give them plenty of time to find the fax and fill the prescription.
By the time I was done at the hardware store, I had messages from my husband. The pharmacy had no fax. They said they would talk to the clinic about it.
So I drove to the pharmacy anyway. By then, the pharmacist had gotten through to the receptionist at the clinic at noon, which is when our doctor was supposed to be in, but he wasn’t yet. He needed to sign the triplicate, before the clinic could fax it to the pharmacy. That hadn’t happened yet. The pharmacist told me that, if she didn’t hear from the clinic by 2, she would call them herself. She knew my husband would be out of the painkillers by the end of today, and how much of an issue that would be.
I decided I would stay in town for a while and have breakfast lunch, then make a stop at the beach.
It’s been about 8 or so months since a storm completely covered the boulders at the main dock, and the waves are still only starting to reveal them again. Where I’m standing to take the above picture, I was about 5 feet above water level. Normally, there would be a lot more boulders visible, and the beach here would be more “slope” and less “erosion cliff”.
The beach was busy, though not crowded. This is a resort town and normally it would have been packed with tourists and people at their cabins for the holidays, even on a weekday. It was good to see people out in the sunshine.
I walked around the strip of beach I usually do, pausing at a Pokemon Go gym near the beach to do battle. I had gone to a tree for some shade, and would have leaned on it (since the park bench that used to be there is now gone), but found it was occupied.
This bumble was just wandering around on the bark, minding her own business, so I let her be. :-)
The pharmacist had told me they would phone our home number if the prescription was filled. By about 3, there was no call, but I swung by anyhow, just in case.
The pharmacist had called the clinic, but the doctor was with a patient and had not been able to sign the triplicate yet. She did not know when he would be done, and there was no fax, yet.
*sigh*
I told her I had to go home, and asked if they could phone us when they got the prescription. She told me they could deliver it to us, even as far out as we are. I told her we don’t have a credit card to pay for it, which is how they usually do payments on home deliveries. She said that we’re there so often, they would just set it aside (the printouts with the bar codes) to pay for it the next time we came in. !!!
Which would be amazing, though I don’t expect it to happen. As I write this, I can see that the pharmacy is either already closed or, if they’re back to regular hours, closing soon.
I really, really hope this can be taken care of by tomorrow. I will happily make the extra drive in to get them!
Thankfully, with my being gone most of the day, the girls were home to take care of the routine stuff. So while I can’t say it was a completely wasted day – I at least got the latches I needed, and even found pruning paint, for the next time we have to cut away live branches – but it feels like nothing tangible got accomplished.
I’m going to install those latches, just to say I got something checked off the to-do list!
