TBT

It has been a while since I did a throw-back post. Honestly I haven't been feeling creative, so this works out.

This morning we woke up to A LOT of thunder and lightning action. It was nearly constant. It has been quite a while since we had this much weather activity of this variety so early in the morning. When Tom went out to feed the critters, the geese did not want to leave the safety of their shelter. Smart critters!

The weather as it happened at 7:30 this morning

Later in the morning as I was getting ready to head out for the day the baby Magpies were a nervous wreck running around looking for a safe place to hang out. I'm hoping that they made it back into the hoop house, but that is not likely - they are not THAT smart.

In looking back at what I had posted a year ago it was a post for the whole week and not just August 29. Check it out HERE.

Enjoy the weekend wherever you call home!

Pests

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a wasps nest in the hoop house. Actually, I really didn't discover them until after I had disturbed their nest or the thing that the nest was attached to. I immediately was stung by one of them. Tom got the hose and sprayed the nest like crazy and the wasps were gone, for the moment.

Since then we have been trying to rid the hoop house of them. I had no idea that they would come back to the same place and look for the nest. Now that I think of it, why wouldn't they? A few days after the first nest was destroyed they had already started to build a new one - sorry wasps, you gotta go! More hose action please.

THEN last weekend I was tending to some of my seedlings for my Fall/Winter garden and I noticed a wasp flying in and then flying into the tube of row cover cloth on the shelf right in front of me. Yup, right in front of me. When Tom came back outside I told him what I had seen and then he went and got a couple of towels to plug the ends of the tube and then was able to spray the heck out of the tube. Turns out there were a couple of nests in the tube. Swell.

Not too long later the wasps that survived the blast of water returned to the hoop house. Here we go again. 

They're baaaack!

This time Tom remembered that we had some sort of Raid spray. It was for ants and roaches, but it worked on the wasps pretty good.

After a couple of squirt of the chemical spray

After a while I decided to start looking around for more nests in the hoop house and I found another small nest in a stack of the plastic pots that I use for transplanting older seedlings. That nest also got the water treatment. Once those wasps/nest were destroyed I started thinking about how much I didn't want to use the spray around my tomato plants so I had to come up with a new solution. A quick search on Google and I found a safe way to deal with the wasps in a more plant friendly manner.

You gotta love Googlepedia

So the recipe that I decided to go with is:

•  16 oz of white vinegar
•  16 oz of water
•  several drops of dish soap 
•  A LOT of peppermint essential oil. 

I had a spare spray bottle sitting around which is kinda weird because in the spring I couldn't find ONE.

Anyway, I poured everything into the bottle, gave it a shake or two and off I went looking for the straggler wasps that still insisted on returning to the Hoop House.

It amazes me how these little creatures will go back to their last known address and try to set up shop again. In the short couple of weeks since we started to battle the wasps they have returned to all of the spots that they built nests before and even tried to start a new nest above the door.

Once I came across a few wasps all congregated on one of the shelves that I stored some of my plastic pots on and gave them a few squirts of my new wasp spray. Surprise, surprise...they didn't like it. They started to writhe on the ground in a manner that suggested that they were not comfortable. After a couple of minutes they finally stopped moving....for good.

This was very exciting for me as I am able to use this spray around my plants and not worry about what sort of chemicals are going into the air or potentially harming my veggie plants.

Wasps have not returned to the hoop house in the past week. I'm not sure if I'm happy or not - mostly because I rather enjoyed spraying them and watching them drop to the ground or the potting bench and try to cling to life only to eventually die.

I love me a new pest remedy.

Something Has Got To Go

Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory from Seed Savers

There have been several times when I sit down to do a post here and I'm fresh out of thoughts, imagine that, or I have other things that require my attention. If I had my way this is what my life would be:

• Turn off my alarm and wake up anytime I want.
• Go for a run or a ride.
• Take care of the critters.
• Nap.
• Plan all of my gardening adventures as the year goes on.
• Play in the garden and make the yard and surrounding areas pretty.
• Cook Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner.
• Go to bed whenever I feel like it.

Looks like a life without working away from home right? It's a dream for me at this point. 

As it is I spend 40 hours out of my week away from home. Actually more because lunch breaks and travel time don't count into those 40 hours. Depending on the time of year and how my morning starts off as I wake up for the day I will either head out after coffee and bible reading. Lately I have not been going outside to help with the chores. I have been known to head outside for morning chores on the weekends though, so I'm not a total deadbeat "mom." 

Gus & Greta checking out the home improvement project

The evenings are fairly enjoyable - arrive home and eat dinner then head outside to give the feathered creatures a treat or just sit and watch them be who they are. The Magpie Squad and the Geese are usually penned up by 7 or 7:30 and the two Magpie Babies get some extra time to play in the pool before it's time for them to go to bed. 

If I want the routine of a person who doesn't go to work everyday I'll take vacation to get away from the crazy. I took vacation time during the first full week of this month and boy I did not want to go back to work. Especially since my supervisor would be on vacation when my vacation time was over.

sigh.

The past two weeks I have been back to the regular work routine and now the weekend is upon us again and this weekend I have even less time to hang out at home. It's all good though. We'll be heading out to the Swan Island Dahlia Festival tomorrow with some friends and then Sunday I have a couple of responsibilities at church that I will need to do before we have home time. Although I have a feeling that my afternoon will involve going to a local building center to pick up some decking materials that are on discount.

oh well.

This is the life of a full-time office assistant/part-time farmer-homesteader. One day I'll leave work and never return.

one day.

First Spookie sugar pumpkin