Relaxation Mode: ON pic.twitter.com/3z124ZvrZk
— Rhino (@RhinoReally) April 25, 2021
No photo contributions this week — guess y’all are too busy cleaning up your gardens, getting prepped for the approaching dormant season — so here’s some random garden news.
It’s bulb-planting season, for many of us:
The smaller blooms produced by these specialty bulbs are perfect for small urban gardens. https://t.co/Rp7kcBnwO6
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 27, 2021
Hardcore winterization…
Russian gardener Nikifor Ivanov grows a special breed of apples the size of pearls which can withstand the extreme weather conditions in Siberia pic.twitter.com/NYDwFZKw89
— Reuters (@Reuters) September 9, 2021
We (just) missed International Coffee Day, but this might be reassuring to some of you addicts:
Scientists say rediscovered species Coffea stenophylla, which grows at higher temperatures, could be the future of coffee https://t.co/NtWdG5hQWS pic.twitter.com/5hOg4UopsJ
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 20, 2021
Forward to the Future!
via @NYTimes “farms that create precise growing conditions using technological advances like machine-learning algorithms, data analytics and proprietary software systems to coax customized flavors and textures from fruits and vegetables.” https://t.co/JB5lf5qlgg
— Paul Barnwell (@MindfulStew) July 6, 2021
raven
We are so deep in the rebuilding of our rental it’s all we can do to mow.
OzarkHillbilly
Garden wise, most everything is in the rearview mirror. Just doing clean up. We are still getting the odd flyby from migrating hummingbirds.
Rescued another box turtle from the Zen garden water feature. Got stung 3 times by yellow jackets for my trouble (cheek, belly, butt). When I went into the house afterwards, there suddenly appeared 7 or 8 yjs in the house. They must have been on my back, without my knowing it. I guess there is a nest I need to eradicate out there.
Van Buren
We are in week 3 of the discussion stage of reducing our back yard lawn area. We have pretty much agreed on how much to reduce it, but have no consensus on what to plant where. Not sure if replacing grass(well, to be honest, clover and plantain) with bare mulch is a good thing.
Ken
I am contemplating the logistics of Siberian apple-picking season, and coming up blank.
raven
The kudzu is receding but it’s still thick.
Ken
@raven: Is this our “Find Mr. Frog” replacement? If so, I’ll guess the lump at the right conceals a tractor. No ideas about the rest of it.
Geminid
@Van Buren: Periwinkle makes a nice groundcover. It’s green year round, with pretty flowers in summer. It coexists well with daffodils and other bulbs. Once it’s established periwinkle chokes out weeds, and what weeds that pop up are easy to spot against the dark green periwinkle leaves.
A good slow release fertilizer like Plantone gets periwinkle going and helps keep it going. The plants spread by running and rooting on top of the ground, so it should not be heavily mulched.
Lapassionara
@Geminid: if periwinkle is the same thing as vinca minor, it can take over and sometimes kill other plants
Geminid
Some previous tenants planted a persimmon tree, and it is loaded with fruit. Does anyone good ways to process persimmons? The fruit have good lavor, but I think any jam needs to be cut with other fruit to buffer persimmon’s astringency.
Geminid
@Lapassionara: I am talking about vinca minor. There is a vinca major, with larger leaves and flowers, which more invasive. But yes, periwinkle is a hard growing plant, which makes it a good groundcover. Periwinkle seems to coexist with larger plants like shrubs and trees, and is not that hard to control since it spreads on the surface.
Immanentize
@raven: Go Dawgs, Go! What did you put in their cereal?
Meanwhile I have maybe five tomatoes left to pick, the pepper plants were busts this year, but my tomatillos are still producing. And feeding the bees. I am going to have to mow again, which is unheard of here as the grass is normally dormant by mid-September. It’s October?!
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Geminid
@Geminid: Periwinkle thrives in part shade and does well in the full shade of deciduous trees since it keeps growing after leaves fall, until the soil gets cold. Periwinkle does not do as well in full sun.
Immanentize
@rikyrah: good morning!
Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s been unseasonably warm here in Chicagoland, but yesterday, rain moved in and it’s finally fall weather. I like it. Years of starting a new school year in the fall makes it feel like a time for new beginnings.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I am thinking we need to stop saying “unseasonably” about any type of weather.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: Sadly true
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: @Dorothy A. Winsor:
Us old fucks still get to say it, but the kids will have to change.
debbie
Snowdrops are my favorite flowers because, at least around here, they’re the first sign of spring.
CaseyL
Two-thirds of the way in my Maine road trip, and the trees have barely started changing into their Fall colors. Not sure if this is unusually late. I’ve been from south to North, mostly along the coast. Will be heading inland tomorrow.
One impression: the forests, being deciduous, are made up of trees which are shorter, with more light coming through. Driving along them is lighter and brighter than in Washington state, where coniferous forests are the standard.
mrmoshpotato
@Dorothy A. Winsor: More rain today. And afternoon thunderstorms! ?
Immanentize
@CaseyL: my mother’s birthday is next weekend (91). I usually drive from Boston to Binghamton and by mid-October the leaves in upstate NY are in full Fall colorful fire. But so far, not a hint of leaf change up near Boston.
SiubhanDuinne
Place seems kinda quiet this morning. Maybe a little Uptown Funk will get the juices flowing.
https://youtu.be/M1F0lBnsnkE
Kay
@Van Buren:
Start with placing the trees/shrubs and let them determine the size of the mulched areas. The mulch should extend to the drip line – the eventual circumference of the widest part of the tree crown- so if you’re using a group of trees/shrubs add circumference plus spacing between and that’s how big the perimeter your “bare mulch” area is. Then go to goundcover/bulbs. You can use bulbs that require sun if the trees/shrubs are deciduous because the bulbs will bloom before the trees leaf out. Then the groundcovers come up, so hosta, pachysandra, maybe more unusual- ferns, lily of the valley. Or you just leave it bare mulch- that can also look good where the “garden” is just larger and smaller trees.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s quiet…too quiet
frosty
@Van Buren:
The bare mulched places in my yard are all weeds growing through mulch. Apparently you have to reapply mulch much more frequently than I feel like doing.
Here’s my next helpful hint: the geotextile the landscaper put down under the mulch doesn’t stop weeds after the first year or two. I’m going to have to tear it all out when I get the gumption to do it … and most of my higher priority projects are done.
Then I’ll start figuring out what to replace it with. “Covering Ground” looks like a pretty good book to start with.
Immanentize
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you! Taking the NotMax shift today? And, Yes it got me motivated…. See you jackals later!
PS give me Ruby Keeler any old day.
frosty
@Geminid: I have a hill with a parking pad in the back that we created from the excavation for our addition. It’s been ugly weeds for years until last year when I pulled out all the long ones and saw this nice low green cover underneath. Vinca. I’m not worried about it spreading since there’s a paved alley on one side and mowed “lawn” on the other. Something that looks OK and doesn’t require any work? I’m down with that!
Immanentize
@frosty: Tip I learned from Satby and use to great effect: instead of that horrid landscaping cloth (which is ok on slopes, I guess) put two or three layers of newspapers under your bare mulch areas. The small amount of chemicals in the newsprint (ammonia?) suppresses weeds for a couple of years, but the paper also composts itself under the mulch. Low effort weed control.
frosty
@Immanentize: That’s a good suggestion … but newspapers? Where do I get those? How about all the cardboard that Amazon keeps sending us instead?
TheQuietOne
@SiubhanDuinne: If not Uptown Funk then maybe some jazz fusion?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2yPyidhTtQ
JPL
@Immanentize: Great idea is you still get home delivery of newspapers.
Congrat to Rice Owls for their win. Grand imp went to a tail gate party and say the GA Tech band perform. They didn’t stay for the game.
JPL
@frosty: The few free newspapers that I get, I use to start my charcoal grill.
Geminid
@frosty: I think anti-weed fabrics have their place. Maybe under six inches of stone in commercial landscape features. I really don’t like it in residential landscaping. It assists wind blown seed weeds by giving them a nice matrix that holds water and and allows roots to get a really good grip. You have to pin fabric down well and even then corners and edges are easily snagged and a pain in the ass to rebury. When customers ask, should we use landscape cloth? I reply that landscape cloth is a plot between the petrochemical industry and Satan. Some of them look at me kind of funny when I say this.
ryk
We just bought a piece of land that is mostly woods with a small lake on it. It is completely overgrown with honeysuckle. I’ve been chainsawing paths through it just to get a look at the lake. Does anyone know how to get rid of honeysuckle?
Geminid
@ryk: Goats. You can beat honeysuckle down to the ground with a weedeater too, that suppresses it. I don’t know how often you have to do this to eliminate honeysuckle.
Benw
@Immanentize: dude, that’s a good idea!
Starfish
@raven: That is beautiful. I was not prepared.
SiubhanDuinne
@mrmoshpotato:
That was funny.
A little … too funny.
JPL
@ryk: When I rid my area of bamboo, I did a lot of research. Since the neighbors let their’s go wild, it’s a continuing process.
Good luck.
Spanky
@frosty: Yes, cardboard works great. Take the tape off first, of course.
JPL
@ryk:Geminid mentioned just keep whacking it down, and that will work with bamboo also. You let the bamboo grow several inches and then cut it back.
raven
@Immanentize: Kirby is recruiting like a madman and has always been a defensive guru.
sab
@frosty: That is good to know, since we
arewere about to put down a geotextile in our other side yard around tje air conditioner and the generator.raven
@Ken: It’s just the gulch behind our spread
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Haha
sab
We put down cardboard then dirt on one side yard, and successfully replaced a poison ivy patch with weed free grass. But it does need mowing. The other side isn’t really accessible to a lawn mower. It currently has english ivy which wants to eat the air conditioner and the house siding. We want to eradicate all life forms over there, especially the yellow jackets that nest in the ivy.
OzarkHillbilly
@frosty: I use the cardboard.
ETA: Protip: remove the packing tape.
OzarkHillbilly
@ryk: Napalm.
ryk
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s about where I am with it. I had no idea honeysuckle could grow so large. It’s practically trees. Many of the “vines” are almost as big around as my arm.
Geminid
Honeysuckle can have a upright growth habit. A friend had a shrub that she could not identify. It had yellow, sweet smelling flowers. Then she found out that honeysuckle can grow into a shrub, and that is what she had.
sab
@ryk: Rumor has it that honeysuckle was imtroduced as landscaping around outhouses. It gets big, and has fragrant flowers. If you don’t have an outhouse then there is not much point in the honeysuckle. I live next to a metropark with an invasive honeysuckle problem. It is a bit of a problem in my yard too. It grows great lumber for fencing projects since it is really strong wood.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Yikes!
sab
@Geminid: My honeysuckle shrub got away from me and is a smallish tree now.
Spanky
@ryk: Cut the vine horizontally and duct tape a dam around it. Pour in some barely diluted Roundup and let it soak in. Care should be taken as to where that Roundup could drip, of course.
ryk
@sab: It must be pretty strong. It sure does dull chainsaw blades.
ryk
@Spanky: That sounds like it would work, but I would need to do it a thousand times. I have acres of this shit. Trees, bushes, vines… It’s exhausting
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: willie peter
JPL
@Spanky: That’s what I finally had to do with the bamboo, but not diluted. Because bamboo closes up so quickly, it’s a two person job. A person needs to cut the bamboo, and another needs to pour insecticide into the shoot.
I hate invasive plants.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Yellow jackets aren’t too bad, their stings are lesser than others I’ve gotten. The one exception being the time I had one land on the sandwich I was eating, unbeknownst to me. Took another bite, something went “crunch” and then POW! stung my tongue. Swelled up pretty good. I talked with a pronounced lisp the rest of that day.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nuke it from orbit.
eta: Willie Peter has to be the spawn of hell.
Lapassionara
@sab: honeysuckle vine can be eliminated by cutting it back just below the bulbous part that is right underneath the soil. The good news is that you don’t have to dig up the root system. The bad news is that there are likely honeysuckle seeds still in the soil that will keep sprouting.
honeysuckle shrub can be treated the same way, if it is small. Once it gets growing into a bush, then it is nearly impossible to get rid of without professional help.
OzarkHillbilly
Ummm… I detect a flaw in your strategy. Bamboo is not an insect. :-)
brendancalling
I didn’t do any gardening this year (not enough time or space) but next year I’ll do garlic and ganja, since it’s legal to grow your own in Vermont. I will, however, be smart enough to keep it well-hidden. I’ve seen more than a few people on Burlington FB pages complaining that their crop was stolen, which is lame but—c’mon. When you live in hippyland, ya gotta take some precautions!
sab
@Lapassionara: Sigh. Yikes. That feels like true facts there.
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Bambicide?
Boobicide?
MomSense
Shoot I have some not great photos of our neighborhood garden. I took them while the dog was walking me.
brendancalling
@CaseyL:
The change is well underway in northwestern Vermont/Quebec. It’s lovely, and a reminder that winter is on the way. BRRRRRR.
Another Scott
@frosty: Around here in NoVA the landscape companies like to make mulch “volcanoes” around trees. It’s stupid, but I guess they’ve convinced people to like the look. (It can strangle the trees and encourages surface root growth that helps lift sidewalks.) And more mulch has to be applied every year to bury the grass and weeds that try to move in on top.
I got a bunch of wildflower seeds last year and attempted to seed a weedy area in the back. 0% survival, so I’ll actually have to do some work to get them to grow next time (peat pots inside in the late winter or something). :-/
Yesterday I finally attacked the weeds in my front yard after years of neglect. Got a 4 gallon backback sprayer and made a solution with 3 oz of “Spurge Power” herbicide. I thought I had things figured out to cover both the front and back yard lawn areas safely, but ran out after doing the front and about 10% of the back. I guess I’ll know in a month or so whether I’ve totally killed the lawn! ;-)
This lawn and garden care stuff doesn’t get any easier over time!
Cheers,
Scott.
Immanentize
@brendancalling: Garlic should be planted next week! “By the full of the moon in October.” I just got four varieties at a local farmers’ market — all hard neck:
Siberian
Mexican Red Silver
Korean Mountain and
German
Soft neck = bigger cloves, but does best in warmer climes. Hard neck types for the north.
Another Scott
@Geminid: [ snort! ]
Cheers,
Scott.
PAM Dirac
No sign of leaf change yet here in Frederick. The weather is getting cooler and in a sure sign of fall, I’ve finished the harvest in the vineyard. 492 pounds to make 6 wines; 3 white, 3 red. It is such a relief not to checking to forecast for rain constantly. Way too much rain in Sept for a great harvest, but I think the wines will turnout fine; good but not great. The good news in the yard this year was the comeback of the white crepe myrtles near the patio. They had died back to the ground after a few hard winters, but are now back better than ever. I really like crepe myrtles but they can be a bit tender in this area.
J R in WV
We have an invasive called Russian Olive, aka autumn olive. Grows like clumps of saplings, with thorns. Has “fruit” in mid-summer that allows birds to spread it, chokes out everything. Roundup barely slows it down. Product called Crossbow is able to kill it after several applications, or chainsaw at the ground and drench the stumps with a strong mix of Crossbow poison in the sprayer.
We used to have a wild rose called multiflora rose that was our worst invasive, but a virus slowed that down quite a bit. Now the “Tree of Heaven” is one bad invasive, sap and sawdust is mild poison, hyperallergenic to some people. It pops up in flower beds, where you can’t just drench it with Crossbow solution. Girdling the trunk and painting the girdled area with weed killer works eventually.
I’m too old to fight this stuff like i used to…
sab
OT: Boxing with Dobby demon cat. That is his idea of fun. Not mine. I swipe at him bop his head, grab his tail, slap his unclawed paw a couple of times. It works for a while, but when he gets really excited the claws come out. He needs a new hobby besides chomping my arm.
Another Scott
@sab: We had a huge amount of ivy when we moved in, English with some poison for good measure. The previous owner bought the nonsense that it is “low maintenance”. (It’s eating my grandfather’s old house in Ohio [sigh].) I mostly dug it out of the front yard by hand. It took a while (months of weekends), but has pretty much not come back except under some shrubs.
One thing I didn’t appreciate until later was that one of the ways it comes back is via birds. They love the berries and spread the seeds via their poop. So it’s important to not let ivy get old enough to set fruit.
Have I mentioned how much I hate ivy??
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: Bambicide? You want to kill Bambi? What is wrong with you?
Boobicide? You want to engage in mass mastectomy??? As an all American male with an all American fixation, What is WRONG with you????
sab
@Another Scott: Thanks. Useful info. Encouraging also. Can be done.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: ha ?♀️
sab
@J R in WV: Tree of Heaven is around here. Ailanthus? Horribly invasive. People don’t realize what a problem it is until it is really a problem.
ETA We call it the “tree from when dinosaurs roamed the earth”, because it is so odd and primitive.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: boobicide sounds dangerous
schrodingers_cat
@sab: You need to get a kitten, to play with the demon cat. He thinks you are slightly odd looking cat.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Werebear’s solution to cats problems: more cats! You might be right. Our five old cats think he is annoying. He is only five.
laura
I grew a devil’s lettuce in the raised bed and have been harvesting sticky stanky buds and drying them on a hanging mesh dehydrating rack in the garage and holy toledo, it’s “A Lot.” Big pickle jars full. It’s not done growing.
That’s the garden report.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: ow ow ow ow ow ow ow
I have been stung only once, but I had a bad reaction. I’m sticking with my initial response of ‘yikes!’.
Keith P.
@Ken: Siberian apple-picking was part of the training montage in “Rocky IV”, right?
sab
@laura: As my late mother in law would say “Oh my!” My spouse is jealous.
JeanneT
@J R in WV: Maybe goats are the answer?
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: The big red wasps with black wings? They are the worst for me because they always attack en masse and I then swell up pretty bad.
I have the same problem with stable fly bites, tho just one bite does the trick with me.
sab
@JeanneT: Goats are always the answer.
oldgold
@brendancalling: “I didn’t do any gardening this year..,”
Hey, you can have a garden without doing any gardening. Year after year, West of Eden is a weedy proof of this.
jeffreyw
@JPL: Near a platoon position we were establishing in Viet Nam, we had to clear some bamboo along a wet line because it was potential cover and interfered with fields of fire. After futile attempts to chop it with machetes we gave up and resorted to Bangalore torpedoes of the sort that you saw for clearing barbed wire in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.
Low Key Swagger
@OzarkHillbilly: I will always have a fear of yellow jackets. Got attacked once so bad they closed both eyes and the doc wound up pulling 90 stingers out of me. Some were in my eyelids. I see any sign of a nest…I am on a mission to kill it. A single yj sting is quite painful to me. I get stung all the time by the paper wasps…it hurts for a second but then I forget it. This year, we’ve had an invasion of what I think are European hornets, and they are around two inches long and are pretty aggressive. I think I’ve located the tree that holds their nest, so this winter I shall find a way to eradicate them.
Ksmiami
@Geminid: persimmon pudding is a steamed toffee like cake. Delicious and u just use a cuisinart
JPL
@jeffreyw: it’s nasty stuff. I imagine that prehistoric skelitons to look the same as the bamboo roots.
Geminid
@sab: Conservationist call Ailanthus, AKA Tree of Heaven, Tree of Hell. It was planted in cities in the last century because it could withstand harsh urban conditions like air pollution. It is the tree of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943), the semi-autobiographical novel written by Betty Smith about a poor girl growng up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg.
Apparently, Ailanthus was introduced to the west in the mid-18th century, when a Jesuit priest evangelizing China sent seeds to France. Now, I’m not saying that the Jesuits spread Ailanthus, just that a Jesuit did.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: I so enjoyed that! Fun to see how many scenes I recognized, a few, not many.
OzarkHillbilly
@Low Key Swagger: Bald faced hornets are supposed to be the worst. I have yet to tangle with them, just lucky I think. I had a nest on one of my windows once, another fell out of an oak next to my drive. I’ve been seeing them about the place on a regular basis this year. Once winter sets in, I ‘m gonna hunt down the nest and blow it out of the tree with my shotgun.
Eunicecycle
@J R in WV: We still have lots of multi Flora rose around us in Ohio. My father in law, a farmer, told me farmers were encouraged to plant it for natural fencing and to cover old strip mining sites. We also have autumn olive that grow as big as trees.
JPL
@Another Scott: My son has English Ivy along with Poison Ivy and snakes. It’s along side a creek, where the little imp can’t play. He’s going to hire the goats to tend to it.
Spanky
@sab: Werebear is right, as usual. More cats!
We stopped at 5, which is number of hands plus 1. Might need moar hands.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: Ow, you must be a Stoic, I think yellow jacket stings are *the worst*. And I say that as someone who is apparently allergic to bee stings!
MagdaInBlack
@laura: Had to look up devils lettuce. I’d never heard it called that. Congratulations on your harvest ?
Geminid
@Ksmiami: Good suggestion. Thanks. Do you add anything?
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: make you a believe a
dnfree
@Geminid: I don’t know anything about persimmon, but I bought some persimmon butter (like apple butter) from the farmers market and it’s very tasty.
evodevo
@OzarkHillbilly: Just went through THAT fun yesterday…had to wear my bee suit to clean out a yellow jacket hive nesting in an old tarp in my woodshed – only got stung twice, and I was happy with that. They are nasty lil buggers when you move anywhere around their territory…I think I got the queen (easy to spot since she is MUCH larger than the workers), so maybe they are gone forever…
Martin
@Van Buren: We went with a native ground cover that you can walk on. Put a drip irrigation system under it which only uses 5% of the water the sprinklers had been using. It’s almost zero maintenance. Just a bit of repairs to the drip system now and then (maybe once a year) and because it spreads a bit of trimming back to keep it in line, usually once a season.
Kalakal
@Low Key Swagger: I have deep fear of wasps and hornets, a few years ago I was stung by a paper wasp and ended up in an ambulance. It was very close and now carry an autoinjector everywhere.
Funnily I’m almost totally immune to bees, they don’t bother me at all.
As far as pain goes I find hornets the worst
I’m on immune therapy which means every 8 weeks they inject a lot of wasp venom in 1 arm and alot of hornet venom in the other, I’m hardly reacting at all now which is good but I can definately say the hornets hurt a lot more
StringOnAStick
My gardening this year consists of redoing everything in the backyard, like replacing rotting wooden timbers with hand built stone walls (which I’m getting pretty good at). I just finished the first wall and filled the resulting raised bed with improved soil, which feels like huge progress! We’re up to 15 Subaru loads of basalt chunks and it might be enough to finish the last wall, which won’t be as high. Maybe once I finish all the walls I’ll send in some before and after photos for the Sunday Garden Chats.
Fall is in full swing here in central Oregon; the trees are stunning and the fall weather for yesterday’s women’s march was fantastic. On the high passes the undergrowth has been bright red for 3 weeks now.
Kalakal
I moved from the North of England to Fl about 10 years and wow, is it different. The strangest thing is all the ‘exotic’ plants I would have to babysit or grow indoors grow like weeds here and all the stuff I took for granted is now a delicate exotic. I love all the palms, live oaks, bromeliads etc. The things I miss most are grass, bluebells (spring bulbs generally) and cranesbills.
frosty
@sab: I call Tree of Heaven the Right-of-Way tree. That’s all I saw out the window from my commuter train.
Geminid
@StringOnAStick: Dry laid stone walls are a lot of fun, as long as you don’t do too much at once. The work is kind of meditative.
J R in WV
Many years ago, in the early 1980s when we still kept livestock, a friend and I were fetching 120 bales of hay into the old repurposed tobacco barn loft for the winter. Was a pretty fall day, sunny and warm, and after I backed the old truck up to the loft door, I climbed into the loft to survey before we started moving the freight into the of the barn loft.
It was dusty, dry and dim, the only light was what trickled between the logs of the barn walls, and the loft floor was covered with waste hay from the previous winter, so I started kicking loose hay towards and down the hole in the loft floor, where it would turn into bedding for the milch cow and draft horse.
I heard a low level buzz, and was looking for the cause, bees, hornets, wasps, whatever, while I continued to push the loose hay towards the hole in the floor. Then I looked down to manage the loose hay, and saw the swarm that was buzzing, yellow-jackets, dozens of them, RIGHT BETWEEN MY KNEES!!!!
I did a bellyflop out the loft door onto the top of the load of hay, shouting GOD-DAMM at the top of my lungs while I shinneyed across the load of hay, down the windshield of the old truck, across the hood, finally onto the ground, still shouting. I was finally able to insert the word BEES~!! into the continuing chant of GOD-DAMM, which caught Bob’s attention, as he slowly moved away.
The yellow-jackets were working their way up my pants legs now, inside the jeans, working on my legs. So I was hopping along, trying to run away while shedding the pants, which were no longer protecting me, but were protecting the F-in bees!! The creek wasn’t full enough to dive in and drown the yellow-jackets. Once I got the pants off I could swat the bees more effectively, and run with both feet.
I got a couple of dozen stings, thankfully not as violently painful as wasps or hornets, and had no allergic reaction. Bu the time we got to the porch of the farm house I was beginning to be bee-free, and Bob let me in, no stings for him, thank you very much.
I had a can of wasp spray, which I used after dark that night to rid us of the nest. The next day I swept the hay/nest up, careful to get rid of everything I sprayed the night before. My worst farming day of all that day. I bet Bob remembers it, too. He remembers the absurdity of his buddy screaming and dancing the bee-sting dance right in the middle of the farm road!
laura
I dont want to derail the upper thread but doggone it those San Francisco Giants are having a game! ⚾️ siblings and friends texting from the Park, Sac, the Rosebowl flea market and en route from Florida. It’s a nice thing that reminds us that our Dad should be around to carry on with us.
Kalakal
@J R in WV: Wow, that must have been terrifying. Glad you made it ok
laura
Woo Hoo! Giants clinch the NL West! Root, root, root for the Giants! And a shout out to Lamonte Wade Jr., winner of this year’s Willie Mac Award. Sports Ball Fan Crushing! I mean, almost…