Orchid

Remember my orchid?

It's blooming again.

So Waspy

Our screened porch was getting to be overrun with wasps.

I couldn't figure it out. I looked all over the place for the nest, to see where they were coming from, but nothing. They were also outside the porch, buzzing all over the house. I figured they probably had a nest on the roof, between the shingles. Or maybe behind the shutters? There were just so many of them, and I couldn't really figure out how they were getting into the porch.

When Larry was here he tried to stopper up the entry point with a rang and some paper towels. It seemed to work for a couple of days, but then they were back. I bought wasp spray, but without a nest it was just like spreading poison into the air.

And it was kind of annoying because this was such a great time of year to spend on the porch! And we were missing it. Because who can relax when screened in with eleven frustrated wasps?

And then, one day, Andy came running up to me. "I found the nest!" he said. "Come with me!" and he led the way outside, down the porch steps, toward the swing... and pointed up.

Can you see it? No? How about this?

There. I zoomed in. Is that better? Still no? OK, I'll just...

There. I know you can see it now. But just in case, here's a different angle.

Yup. it was up in the tree.

So I waited until just before nightfall, just as the instructions on the wasp spray say, and then went out to the tree, pointed it at the nest, and hit the spray button.

Only to have a huge cloud of poison spray go halfway up before gravity set it and pulled it all back down on top of me. Think spitting into the wind... if one spat vast amounts of poison.

So then I changed tactics. I went to my bedroom and climbed out onto the porch roof. "Never, Never, Never do this!" I kept saying, as Andy watched me, wide-eyed from the safety of my bedroom.

I crept out to the almost-edge of the porch. It's a pretty flat roof, so I was stable, but suddenly the grass and the swing seemed very, very far away. I realize that I have a fear of heights which I usually keep in check by staying on the ground. But these were extraordinary circumstances. I just didn't want to hit it enough to anger the wasps, but then not disarm them enough to follow the invading poison back to me, attack me, and cause me to plummet to the hard earth.

I inched my way out as far as I dared, pointed the spray bottle at the next, and hit the button.

The spray was pretty direct. It went right toward the nest until it was about eighteen inches away, and then gravity did it's dirty work and the spray curved downward, again soaking the same spot I had hit before.

Meanwhile, the wasps circled their next making "nyah nyah" buzzing sounds.

I was so frustrated, and had now wasted four spray bottles (counting the ones I sprayed in the porch pre-next discovery) and hours of my time trying to get these suckers.

Well, a few days later we had a lot of wind and some rain. Go back to that photo of the tree. See all those lovely yellow leaves? Gone. The tree is now naked.

The thing about leaves is, they protect everything that lives IN the tree. Including the nests that wasps live in.  It took two days for half the next to get ripped off.

And then the following week we had the first frost.

I kind of regret the time I wasted hunting them down.

Foliage

You wish you had this view, with the beautiful colored leaves.

Actually, I wish I had this view. Since then we had a lot of wind and then some rain, so now a lot of these colors are already gone.

It's kind of nice, though, for the two days we've got it.

Days Like These...

How D'ya Like Them Apples?

I was fortunate enough to be able to chaperone Andy's kindergarten field trip to the local apple orchard, where the kids got to see how they peeled apples for pies, washed them, squashed them into cider, and then go on a nature walk through the orchard, pick their own apples, go on a hay ride, and finally have some cider and donuts.

It was such a perfect day. I went on this field trip with Nate's class. Back then, they didn't have the same requirements for volunteers as they do now. It's only been two years, but now to even go on a field trip you need to complete the Bully Training Video and also get fingerprinted. I'm not making this up. Getting your fingerprints taken makes it much less likely that you'll run off with the wrong child at the apple orchard. Or perhaps abscond with a tractor that isn't yours.

I'm sorry, not everyone shares my sense of humor or distain for this particular subject. Moving on.

Anyway, Nate field trip had one adult for every two children, that's how many parents had volunteered. It was also pouring rain, which put a damper on the nature walk and then the teachers decided it made more sense to bring the snack back to the school.

Andy's trip was so, so lovely. There were only a few parents there. The sun was out. It wasn't too hot or too cold. There were donuts and cider for everyone, and afterwards I went and bought a half dozen donuts from the shop and they were WARM. They were supposed to be for the boys, but THEY WERE WARM! WARM DONUTS IN MY CAR! I KNOW I'M SHOUTING! BUT WARM DONUTS!

If you come visit, perhaps we can stop by this lovely place. And have warm donuts.

Orchid

It's in my window. I thought it had died. I was wrong.

New England Color

Not all the colors, but some of the colors.

The Accidental Squash

I have an Accidental Squash.

See, what happened was, I planted my little garden as usual this spring, only I tried to switch the location of some of the items. The squash got planted at the far end of the plot, at the top of the slope.

Only when the seeds turned into plants, I realized there was a squash plant growing down at the other end, in the grass.

It was a real squash plant, and it was doing really well, so I didn't want to dig it up, but it was growing so fast and so large that the grass around it couldn't be cut.

I lifted part of it and placed it on part of a gate, where the end of it rested quite nicely.

But this squash plant grows so fast that it soon grew pas the gate, and now it's reached the house. It's even got a couple of squash on it now.

The Zucchini up top is also doing well, even though it's growing differently. In the morning the flowers open wide and  the effect is quite beautiful.

 I have tons of tomatoes already. If only they would turn red.

 This is my first year planting this. It isn't as high as an elephant's eye, so I don't know if we'll get anything from it, but yes, it's corn. If I get even one ear I'm doubling the amount I plant for next year.

Dirt Patch

I finally planted the few seedlings and the remaining seeds. Once again, Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a dirt patch in my back yard.

Every year I do this. I plant things back there and then struggle to get them to grow. Some years the plants do well, and others... not so much. It depends on rain and sun, and also on our summer vacation schedule.

Every year I also tell myself that this is the last year for this particular dirt patch. Next year I will clean out an area of our back yard. I can pick an area that is flat, so I won't have to worry so much about the run-off washing away planted seeds.  I can plant twice as much. But I'll have to clear the area of grass and grass roots, and I'll also have to weed it all constantly, and besides that I'll have to somehow keep the animals away. The deer have come as close as the swingset, see. There are also rabbits and mice. 

But this time I mean it. Next year. Next year! I found a cute picket fence in the woods - something the previous owners left there, no doubt. I can paint that and it'll look really cute. 

Of course, since I planted the seeds a week ago and nothing has happened, I'm wondering if I should even bother...

New Life

One day it will stop raining, and I'll finally get to pop these babies in the ground.

More Grass

It's hard work spreading grass seed. Especially when you have such small hands.

Actually, the best part of this whole fiasco is how I watered the seed. Our hose is on the other side of the house. Instead of stretching it and walking around the house, I just walked it up the deck and through the kitchen, then out the front door. I should have taken pictures of THAT... but I was too busy actually wrestling with the hose and trying to make sure we didn't somehow spray it inside the house.

Yard Work

Yes, I even gave Nathan a rake to help spread the grass.

I regretted it when I realized he was actually raking up small mounds of dirt everywhere. But those were easily fixed. He took himself so seriously.

The Green Grass Grows

Last weekend I handed the boys a bag of grass seed and had them plant it in the bald spots in the front yard.

A couple of years ago I tried planting grass seed up there. The rain started falling moments after I spread the seed, washing the seed down into the driveway and into the flower beds where I had just planted tulips.

Last year I bought something called Turf Builder (maybe it was something else?) and I spread it around rather unevenly. I thought it was grass seed, but I think it was actually just weed killer. Instead of anything growing, it just killed the few stalks of crabgrass and dandelions that were out there, making the bald spots much, much balder.

So after all that, I figured it couldn't get much worse handing the boys a bag of plain old grass seed.

Of course, the next day it rained, but as I directed them to stay at the top of the slope, I son't think the seed will wash down all the way.

It's actually been cold, cloudy and rainy all week, with a notable lack of sun. I'm hoping when this weather breaks, the grass will actually start to grow.

The white stuff? Grass seed.

May Day

 The tree at the top of the driveway, the one I've been working to keep alive for the past couple of years - removing a bush that was crowding it and giving it tree-food and anti-insect stuff... It's flowering! We've had years go by with just boring old leaves, so this means something.

Happy May!

Gardening

This spring I'm planting a vegetable garden again. Once again, I'm going to give it my best shot. I'm planting green beans, tomatoes, squash and zucchini, and this year I'm trying carrots and corn.

I'm really not sure about the corn.

I also got a blueberry, a raspberry, and a blackberry plant. I'm feeling ambivalent about these, and a little guilty. We used to have blackberries, but I pulled up the plants because they were so mixed in with the thorny brush near the trees. I figure that, now that I've got most of the thorny brush cleared, and now that I'm more familiar with what the thorny brush looks like, I can distinguish between desirable and undesirable.

Good luck to me.

Yard Work

At the end of the school year, when the weather finally warmed a little bit, I was really motivated to do yard work. I clipped and trimmed. I chopped down a huge bush, and used electric saw to do it! I mulched. I must have purchased twenty five bags of mulch, and it didn't get half of what I needed done, done.

At some point, I lost interest. I put down the mulch I got, but I didn't bother to get more, and there are still bald spots. The thorny brush in the back is so bad I can SEE in invade the grass. And the weeds are popping through the existing mulch, and the bushes I clipped now need trimming again, which makes me really angry. I could spend all day, every day, in the yard, and I still wouldn't be able to keep up.

I wish I had more time.

Zucchini Squash

I started my own little garden in early spring. I planted four squash plants. Lucky for me, only two of them survived being transplanted. I say lucky for us, because now the plants are producing big fat zucchini. And the people in this house do not like zucchini.

I manage to peel it and grate it and add it to chicken tikka. Or else I make zucchini bread, which is great, but I end up eating half of it. I found a curried zucchini soup online, which I plan to make, but Steve is already horrified. The thing is, each of these things uses a fraction of a large zucchini.

On top of the zucchini produced in our yard, we are getting small zucchini and squash from the CSA. Each week, along with tomatoes and basil and broccoli, we get more of what we already have.

So... ideas welcome, folks. I'm very close to just baking zucchini bread until the zucchini is gone, and freezing the loaves. I hate freezing bread, because toasting it is a bother, but I can't think of any other way...

Burned By A Bush

It's been hot here for the past few days. HOT. That's the way it is in New England. It's cold until someone flips the "summer" switch and suddenly we've got humidity, 80 degrees, and mosquitoes everywhere.

Anyway, once the world started drying out a little, I decided to work in the yard a little.

Every year I decide that THIS is the year I will fix up our yard. I recently read (in a Yahoo! article) that landscaping of the homes surrounding yours could affect your home's value. Of course, being me, I didn't think of the 20 cars parked next door, or the house a few doors over that has been under construction for over a year, or even the one down the street that looks like it might be perpetually preparing for a yard sale that never happens. No, I thought of our awful lawn, and how the mulch near our trees has washed away so you could see the lining, and how that tree at the foot of the driveway is dying, and how me might possibly be affecting the collective value of our neighborhood.

Because it's all about me.

Anyway, I made this the year to do yardwork I have been putting off.

One thing I've been wanting to do is remove one of these bushes at the foot of the driveway. There are two, and they have gotten so big that one is crowding a smaller tree. The tree has pretty pink flowers when it blossoms, but it's stopped. I think this might be because of the salt from the road, but it might also be because of the bush crowding it.

So the other day I went out and started lopping off branches. And for ten minutes I thought it would be a fast job.

Until I got all the branches off and was left with just the stump.

It's not a huge stump, but it's thick. And deep. I couldn't dig the roots out. So I decided to saw it off as low as I could. But then I realized that I was sweating and my arms were shaking, and that I could hardly walk. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone for my run before doing this?

The next day I went out with the only hand saw I could find. Two hours later, I stopped. Again, my arms were shaking. The stump wasn't even sawed halfway through.

It's still there. The stump, I mean. I've cleared away the branches, and it looks... tended to, but it isn't the clear ground I was hoping for. I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

Officially Spring

How do I know it's Spring?


My gramma used to make a bit of a fuss over the crocus coming up in the spring. She would fuss over them and say the frost would kill them. These are not crocus, they are tulips, and possibly some daffodils, depending on where I planted the bulbs. But the sentiment is the same.

Here's where the other half of the bulbs are.

The Very Hungry (and scary) Caterpillar

I may have mentioned that I planted a few tomato plants this year. I may also have mentioned that a few of the plants have, in fact, actually produced some tomatoes.
A few weeks ago I started to notice that something had eaten the leaves off my carrots. Not the actual carrots themselves, just the leafy parts above the ground. After some concern, I decided that, as long as the actual roots were intact and kept growing, there was nothing to worry about. I thought is was these gold beetles eating them, as I'd seen a few of them.

But then my tomato leaves started disappearing. Seriously, whole leaves. Nothing but a green stem and some green branches holding a few tomatoes was left on one plant. Another plant had half a green tomato left. There simply weren't that many beetles.
I was watering my poor plants, wondering what I was going to do, what animal was getting this close to the house, how I would protect the plants, when I noticed something. My mind couldn't make sense of it at first. It was like a clump of cherry tomatoes, but grown so close together that they merged to form one long strand of.... wait, it wasn't on the cherry tomato plant, it was a regular tomato plant. One without the leaves. It was.... THE BIGGEST CATERPILLAR I HAD EVER SEEN.
This isn't the actual caterpillar we found. It is one just like it I found off the internet, but it will give you some idea of how huge this monster was.
It's important to know that it's huge, because then I sound less crazy when I tell you this next part. I ran inside and got Steve to get rid of it for me. I was afraid to touch it, because I was afraid it was going to bite me. I mean, this thing was as long and thick as a hot dog. A huge, thick, green, lumpy hot dog with stripes and dots. And if it's able to finish off half a beefsteak tomato, imagine what it would do to my hand!