While doing my rounds this time of year, I like to grab some crab apples from the one tree that has tasty apples to nibble on as I walk. High winds have knocked down a lot of the apples, so I don’t know that we’re going to bother harvesting them this year, but there are enough in reach that I can snack on them.
I grabbed a couple this morning, buffed the dust off one of them on my shirt, and was about to take a bite, when I saw something move!
This wasp had been asleep in the apple! It was still very groggy in the cool of the morning, and eventually squeezed itself out and promptly fell to the ground. 😄
Yesterday was a day of running into town a couple of things, but I did manage to get one important – if rather late – job done in the evening.
I burned a fungus.
I really should have done it earlier in the year, but just didn’t have the chance until last night. Mostly because of winds. Yesterday evening was finally calmer. The fungus seemed to be growing anew on the remains of a stump, so I really wanted to get that burned away. Because this was under tree branches, I used the sheet of metal to prevent the flames from getting to high, even though I kept the fire small. It ended up being handy. I found that, by moving it around, I could basically direct the fire to around the stump area more easily, making sure to get all the fungal bits.
I had found the fungus almost a year ago, while taking photos of various mushrooms around the yard. The ones growing on the old apple tree stumps were so pretty and unusual, I looked them up – only to find out they are a deadly disease called Silver Leaf, and likely what is killing our crab apple trees. To get rid of it, at its worst, it is actually recommended to take out the tree, roots and all. I have no way to take out the roots – and this stump is in between two other trees, which are so close together, I wouldn’t be able to do so without damaging the other trees, anyhow.
The larger stump I’d burned earlier shows no signs of growth on it. I still need to burn it the rest of the way down to ground level, just because it’s sticking up so high. I could cut it flush to the ground, but this way, I can also burn the stack of diseased branches we’d pruned away, too.
Reading up on this disease again, I find myself thinking of the fruit and nut trees we intend to plant in the area, in the relatively near future. We might have to get brutal to eliminate the disease, and simply cut down any tree that shows signs of the disease. This includes inedible crab apple trees closer to the house, where several have already died. Even the plums (also an inedible variety, but one that my dad used to make wine out of) show signs of it.
*sigh*
That would be a job for next year. For now, we will just burn away what we can, including the pruned branches.
This morning, I headed over to do a meter reading on our power pole. I’ve stayed away, since it’s got a wasp nest under it, so I haven’t actually looked at the nest for a month.
Hhhmmm.
It… looked pretty quiet in there.
Was that spider webs I was seeing in the opening???
Yup.
There was a dead wasp in the opening, too.
I am guessing this nest, being as exposed as it is, did not survive that frost we got not long ago. The tree by the house is still buzzing, so the wasps inside it are still active, but I can probably remove this nest safely, now.
I don’t want to destroy it, though, so I’ll think about how to take it down with as little damage to the nest as possible. I should be able to peel it away from the box and the post easily enough. That power cable it is built around will require greater care.
There was also a snoozing moth next to it! :-)
In other things…
The reason we had to go into town a couple of times yesterday was because the girls had arranged for a vet visit for Leyendecker. The boy is now snipped!
It still blows me away how expensive it is to get that done – and it costs twice as much for females! Thankfully, the girls are taking care of that, as they are able.
I took advantage of being in town to pick up some scrub brushes, including for just outside stuff. This morning, I finally was able to give the outside cat water bowls a thorough scrubbing. I was even able to scrub the bird bath. I’m amazed we got another year out of that thing! It developed such big cracks in it over the winter, and yet it still holds water!
Oddly, this year I have found a couple of drowned frogs in it. We’ve been seeing a lot of little frogs in the garden plots this year, which is great, but why would we have drowned frogs in the bird bath? I keep a brick in it, so the smaller birds can more easily reach the water. Plus, with all those cracks and not expecting it to hold water very well, I haven’t been keeping it as full as I used to. Any frog should have been able to get out of the water, easily.
I’ll have to keep a closer eye on it, now that I’ve cleaned it and refilled it. So strange!
While doing my rounds this morning, I made sure to check where I’d found wasps while trying to clean up yesterday.
I was surprised by what I saw.
First, there was the hole in the ground. I didn’t expect to see an actual hole like that.
Also, do you see the light brown stuff scattered around? Particularly in the grass to the left?
Those are pieces of nest cells.
When I was spraying the area with the hose, I couldn’t see any of this. I’m not sure if it was because I was so focused on the wasps, themselves, or if some critter came through during the night and dug things up even more.
I also zoomed in to the root or stick across the hole in the ground.
The wasps on the stick/root itself were quite still and just sitting there. Like they were sleeping or something. The other wasps were more active.
I don’t know what kind of wasps these are. They are smaller than the yellow jackets I’m used to seeing, and have more black to yellow on their bodies.
Well, whatever they are, we have to get rid of them.
I used the hose again, filling the hole. I saw a lot fewer wasps flying around than before, so I hope that means they are moving on to somewhere else. Until they do, we’re going to have to be careful. Especially when trying to interact with Butterscotch’s babies.
Which one of my daughters was able to do, last night!
I saw through the window that all 4 of them were out and playing, so my younger daughter went out, sat on the ground and wiggled a stalk of wheat (self-sown from the straw we’ve been using as mulch this year) at them.
Two of them even came close enough to sniff her sandal, and when one of them turned away to start eating, she was able to pet its back – until it noticed that she was touching it! *L*
This morning I went to get a meter reading to submit to the electric company.
Being rather short, I tend to see more glare on the cover than the numbers themselves. My solution has been to hold my phone up and take several pictures. The display cycles, with a short blank period in between, but after taking 3 or 4 shots, I can be pretty sure at least one of them has the reading in it.
What this means is that I’m fiddling with my phone to open the camera as I walk up to the power pole.
I really should pay more attention.
After I took the pictures, I looked down and found myself staring at this, maybe a foot and a half away from my face.
There were no wasps flying around, so I took pictures.
Because I’m like that. :-D
But why were no wasps flying around?
I think this is part of my answer. These are not the aggressive yellow and black wasps. I couldn’t see much, but they look a lot like the docile bald faced hornets in the Chinese elm trees.
From what I could see, they wasps were not so much “docile” as “sluggish”. It was a bit cooler this morning, so maybe they just weren’t warmed up yet.
We are actually going to leave this nest. We go to the post once a month to get a reading, and since I’m using a camera to see the numbers anyhow, we don’t disturb them in the process. In the winter, after they die off, we can carefully remove the nest. Who knows. We might Ebay it or something. There is apparently quite the demand for the nests!
I just wish I’d noticed it before I took the meter reading. It would have been much easier on my heart! :-D
Long story short, we are still down to just one account.
Long story long…
First, we got a call from the tech guy, saying that he would be here between 1 and 3pm to see what’s going on with our secondary internet account.
Second, we got our ebill for the month.
Yeah. Over $550. They charged us $2 a gig in overage fees, even though my husband had been told they wouldn’t.
Which is when he had a conversation with them!
At first, they tried to say they couldn’t credit us the amount, or credit us for the account we couldn’t use all month that we paid for, anyway.
So he told them to cancel the secondary account.
Well, they couldn’t credit the whole amount, but they could credit us $10 a month for 6 months.
He told them to cancel the secondary account.
He got put on hold while she went to see what she could do.
In the end, he agreed to a credit of $20 a month for 6 months. Which basically covers the cost of the secondary account for a month.
After all the huge expenses we had this month, like having to get a new lawn mower and new washing machine, among other things, plus we’ve still got the rest of the bill for my mom’s car to pay soon, we’ll be paying this bill down slowly for a while. I’d already budgeted a higher amount for the bill, but not that much!!
Meanwhile, we still had the tech guy coming out.
Shortly after noon, I headed out to unlock the gate – just in time for him to pull into our driveway! Yup, he arrived almost an hour early. We got a good laugh over my being there to unlock it at just the right time. :-)
He started off by bringing in his own router to test with. While he did his best to make sure he wouldn’t disconnect us from the one account that was still working, if badly, my daughter stopped working, just in case. The last thing she needed was to be in the middle of something, and suddenly, no internet. So she and I started on the picnic table.
The tech ended up switching modems, changing connectors, changing the entire cable, replacing the receiver on the satellite itself, all while constantly checking and rechecking the signal we were getting.
He was actually getting negative numbers. Which never seen before. I mean, if there’s no signal, it should be zero, but to get negatives?
He was at it for about three hours, in 25C/77F heat, with the humidex at about 30C/86F, in full sun on the roof, and not even a breeze!
Thankfully, we had just picked up a case of van water, and what didn’t fit in the cooler in the van, I brought to the house. I had some nice, cold water bottles to give him!
He did everything he could, and nothing worked.
That one dish is just not getting a signal.
In the end, there was just one thing left, and it was not something he could do.
I identified a specific tree branch that might be causing the problem.
It was actually one I’d narrowed it down to, myself, though partly because it’s the one we can reach to try.
I was ready to just grab a ladder and take it down right away.
Thankfully, my daughter stopped me.
This is the trunk of that tree.
Do you see those holes?
The elms are all riddled with them.
They are made by bald faced hornets. Which are wasps that burrow into trees to make their nests.
That’s right. The tree itself is the nest.
In the fall, they all die. The ones that hatch, build a nest elsewhere.
The tree we’d already pruned huge branches from had been a nest last year, but is empty now.
The year before, they had been in this tree, but in other branches.
This year, their nest is this branch.
Now, these wasps are actually pretty docile. They will leave you alone, if you leave them alone. They are not aggressive. In fact, they are desirable, as they keep down other insects.
If, however, you F* them up, they will F* you up.
Cutting down the branch that is their nest is about as F’ing them up as you can get.
The guy was still hear as my daughter explained all this, which I think he appreciated. He may well need that information at someone else’s place, in the future!
Which reminds me…
I had talked to him earlier about how the satellites had worked for the past while, and that the trees themselves actually have a lot less branches than before. We can tell when the branches are a problem during high winds, as they block and unblock the signal. So when he told me which particular branch he thought my be the problem, we also talked about what to do if we took the branch down, and it still didn’t work!
After he was gone, we had a talk about it.
One option is to pick up a whole lot of wasp and hornet killer, spray the branch, then cut it down. The problem with that is, this isn’t an external nest like with paper wasps that we can spray. The nest is inside the branch, and it’s very unlikely we’d be able to kill them all. We’d probably have to empty 3 cans over the length of the branch, and hope the contact kill gets the ones we miss.
Unlike the paper wasps, though, we don’t actually want to get rid of these guys. These ones are “good guys”. Plus, they will die on their own in the fall. Until then, they will help keep actual problem insects down.
My daughter suggested we just get used to having one account for a while, then take the branch down after the tree stops buzzing.
So tomorrow, my husband will call our provider back and ask them to suspend the account for now. We’ll just have a small fee each month, instead. If we keep paying what we normally budget at the same time, we’ll pay off the current bill much, much faster, too.
In a couple of months, we should be able to remove the branch, then ask them to activate the account again and see if it worked. If not, it’s time to call someone to come out again. Which is what the “care” charge on our bill covers.
Until then, we just have to keep rationing our internet usage, and get used to having horrible internet. The guy did check the primary account, too, and it was working fine, though as I type this I’m noticing we have lost internet again.
Oh, it’s back.
Anyhow.
So I’m kinda feeling really lucky right now. I had been eyeballing that tree and thinking of that one branch that was most likely to be at least part of the problem. I was thinking of just taking it down, and even decided on where to cut it, so that new branches growing out of the remains would still provide shade.
I just never got around to doing it.
When going under the tree, you can hear buzzing, but I’d never been able to see where the buzzing was coming from. My daughter was able to point it out, and you can actually see the wasps crawling around. If I had cut that branch, once it crashed to the ground, I would probably have been swarmed.
I seemed to have really dodged a bullet on that one!
So that’s where we stand now.
Given that my husband already got them to credit us for the next 6 months, they might balk at suspending the account. Still, it’s not the same as cancelling it, and I would hope that they would be understanding once he tells them why we have to wait before we can take the branch down and see if that’s what’s causing the problem. The tech couldn’t even say that it would work. It’s just that he tried everything else he could do. It’s the only thing left that he could think of.
We’ve been wanting to get rid of that tree for various reasons, but now we have a new one.
Wasps!
We’ll just have to find some other way to provide shade.
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.
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…
A couple of photos from when we were exploring the native plants garden.
This bee photo was pure serendipity. It was the first of several I took, in quick succession, and the only good one of the bee!
This was in a structure near the native plants garden that I think is actually there to disguise and protect some infrastructure equipment. There were several wasps nests in varying stages of construction, all on the shadow side of these support beams.
I didn’t see the spiders until I uploaded the photos, though.
I’ve seen many wasp nests in varying stages of construction before, but never have I seen the cells exposed like this, at this size. The little ones on the left of the photo is usually about as big as they get, before they get covered over. I think the high level of protection they have in these locations may have something to do with it.
The Re-Farmer 