Woody and the Wasps
Woody discovered a large wasp’s nest in a rhododendron, discovered it the hard way. He was feeding the Rhodos, when a wasp stung him. He then saw a nest the size of a large cantaloupe. Paper wasps? We couldn’t leave it, the way I did the one on a window in my office. I just didn’t open the window till they were done with that nest, a few years later. But this nest would have prevented oil and propane deliveries, located between the two tanks.
He had no idea what to do, nor did I, so we got a local exterminator to come. He took the nest down, but warmnd us the wasps would probably hang around for a day or two. The next morning, when Woody turned on the drip system, the easps swarmed him. Two of them stung his arm. Then one really dug into his arm and he couldn’t get it out of him for a minute or two.
His arm swelled up and hurt like hell. It began to itch and swell and hurt. He cound’t sleep that night. As I suggested, he put ice on it, took a powerful antihistamine that had bee prescribed for me to curtail a rash and also Aleve. That helped a bit, but it was still swollen, itchy and painful. So it went for three days before all the swelling went down. Now it finally seems to be entirely better.
`I’ve frozen 21 lbs of beans and 2 ½ lbs [good for soups and stews]. That’s as many as we used this winer. I’ll probably freeze another pound of two, as I froze far less spinach this year, although a good broccoli amount. Win some, lose some. Woody managed to pick and I processed and froze 3 lb s of sour cherries for pies and a bit more for some other dessert. Most years, the birds eat them before they’re ripe enough, but this year, there were so many that we left half the tree for the birds. The birds and rabbits did get the red currants before I could harvest any. With the black currants, I just didn’t get to them in time.
I had a whole day planned out yesterday while Woody did the week’s shopping in Orleans. However, I got into my new book THE HOUR OF MIY DEATH and I just kept working, writing till 5 pm in spite of stopping briefly to help stow the groceries. When I’m writing, I have no sense of time passing. It’s even more so with poetry and meditation.
We have been suffering a lack of pollinators in spite of my previously successful pollinator garden. I’ve learned that summer people are spraying for mosquitoes [which doesn’t work for that a couple of dayis] and thus killing off the bees, both honey and bumble, and other pollinators. Remove mosquitoes: more mosquitoes come within a short period of time. They breed in any puddle, marsh, wetlands, bucket of water. I was surprised that this spring, we had no bumble beesa where they always nest. Beekeepers we know have no honey as their bees have died. Spraying also makes bees susceptible to diseases. I had been wondering why we had so few pollinators this year and thought maybe I had planed the wrong things in my pollinator garden. I began growing it a few eyars ago, when I noticed a lack of pollinators for our vegetabls and fruit.
The Patriots looked like a mediocre team in the first preseason game. Porous O line, no running game, no good receivers. The defense looked good at first but petered out in the second half. Disappointing. Zappe played he whole game; He has a strong arm but hardly ever had a receiver downfield he could throw to.
Tonight, company.