“What’s that Peg?” you ask.
I lied to you - not really on purpose, nonetheless I told you something that wasn’t true. A misunderstanding… yeah! Let’s call it a misunderstanding.
“Peg! What are you going on about now!” you ask with exasperation.
I know you all think I’m some kind of botanist (cause I tell you all about plants) or entomologist (cause I tell you lots of things about bugs too) but the truth is — I’m not. And when I said that all butterflies are girls —
“I wondered how they reproduced,” a beautiful lady said to me —
“I didn’t know all butterflies were girls,” another said to me —
— I didn’t mean it literally. And hence, the lie — er, misunderstanding.
I just refer to them as girls cause they’re pretty. Flies and other ugly, pesky critters I will always refer to as boys.
“What sex would you call an angel?” Momma asked when I had this discussion with her.
“I don’t know…angels are pretty… I guess if I was talking about angels I would say she.”
“Angels are neither male nor female by sex. They are male or female by nature,” Momma explained to me.
I did not know that.
Speaking of animals and sex, I saw this on the internet.
“Good luck getting those lions to breed, Noah,” captioned this picture which came from a children’s Bible stories book.
But just let me say here that some female lions do have manes. There’s a place called Mombo in Botswana’s Game Reserve that have maned female lions — manes so luxurious that they fool competing lions into thinking they’re males.
I sincerely regret any pain or embarrassment this misunderstanding may have caused you.
<<<<<>>>>>
That cat!That darn cat!
Yeah, Smudge.
I opened my recipe box looking for my Dream Bars recipe and that little guy climbed right inside. He bounced around on the papers and when a corner came up, he sunk his little teeth into it. So now I have a box full of perforated recipes — at least the ones on top anyway.
Smudge reminded me so much of Baby Blue when he climbed in there. Baby Blue always thought anything new brought into the house was hers.
And speaking of Baby Blue allows me to show you one of my favorite pictures of her with our handsome little grandson, Andrew.
Sigh.
But, back to my story.
When I open a can of cat food, I give Smudge some of it and put the rest in the refrigerator. The next time he cries at me, I open the fridge and get the can out and give him a little more of it. Well Smudge has learned that all the yummy food comes out of the fridge and now when I open the door for anything, I have to remove a little Smudge before I can shut the door again.
I gave Smudge and his sister Cleo their last dose of worm medicine this past week. Cleo is all but two pounds. Smudge is a pound and a half, but I don’t really think Smudge is much bigger, he’s just fatter. His little tummy is so round another good name for him would be Roly-Poly — if I didn’t like Smudge so much.
Ginger and Smudge play together. Smudge will grab her and bite her legs. Ginger gets him on his back and stands over top him, which is a sign of dominance in a dog. Smudge don’t care, he’ll just bite her on the tummy.
Last week Mike found a short piece of gutter in the way back of the mill.
“Let’s put this up over the cat water bucket and feed the rainwater into it,” Mike said.
“Okay,” I agreed. The runoff from the roof will keep the cat bucket fresh and full.
Mike got a hammer, a couple of nails, a six foot ladder and out we went through the cat room door.
“Let’s put it over your shop windows,” he said.
“Fine by me.”
Mike set up the ladder, climbed up a couple of steps, put the hammer and nails on the top of it and reached for the gutter which I was holding.
Mike took one end of the gutter and said for me to take the other. “Try to hold your end up as high as you can.”
I stood on tiptoes, gutter in one hand, other hand against the board and batten side of the mill for support, and waited as Mike started to pound the nail through the thin metal side of the gutter.
“OW!” I cried, dropped the gutter, slapped at me elbow and walked a few feet away.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked as he now tried to support the entire gutter on his own. It wasn’t heavy, just awkward.
“I GOT STUNG!” I was not happy. I did not see the bee, I did not hear the bee but we’ve pounded on the eaves before and gotten stung, so I knew what it was, but usually it’s Mike that gets stung and not me.
“Come on. This won’t take long. Hold your end up.”
I went back to my station, picked up my end of the gutter, got on tiptoes and held the gutter as high as I could. Mike started pounding again.
“OOOWWWW!” I dropped the gutter and slapped the bee from my face. I was less happy now than I was before. “Why don’t you screw it in instead of pounding on it!” I thought that would disturb the bees less but Mike was well into the project and wasn’t going to change his tools.
“Come on!”
“No. I’m not getting stung again.” I haven’t been stung by a bee in years and now twice in one day. I scanned the eave and spotted a few bees. “There they are!”
Mike went for the wasp and hornet spray and sprayed the heck out of them then he managed to get the gutter up without my help and without getting stung either.
That evening we went to the Robinson’s for game night.
I’ll tell you what. We have a serious game addiction going on here. Out of the past fourteen nights we have probably played on twelve of them! We have several games we enjoy playing which include Skip-Bo, Mexican Train Domino’s, and Rummikub.
By the next night, as we sat there playing cards, the bee sting on my elbow was so itchy it was driving me crazy. I scratched and scratched and scratched.
“You need some lavender,” Steph said and she got up and made me a little roller ball container of lavender infused oil. Not only does it help relieve the itch but I love the way it smells too. Stephanie is such a good friend.
The bite on my face? I don’t know why it didn’t get itchy like the one on my elbow.
Our insurance company has asked us to remove the trees and brush that touch the sides of the mill and barns so Mike started that project. He got his tractor out and is using that to push the smaller trees over and clean up the brush. I was out there helping him the other day and I had to wait on him for something or another.
I’ll just pull a few weeds from my (overgrown) flower bed while I wait, I thought. It’s a job I’ve been working on for a few weeks now — not because my flower bed is so big, but because I don’t work at it very often or for very long.
There I was, all bent over, pulling weeds and grass from the flower bed, making a neat pile I could pick up and toss in the weeds at the edge of the yard when I was done, when…
“OW!” I said right out loud. Those dang thorns! I must have grabbed one. I looked at my pinky to see if the thorn was still in there but it wasn’t. I could see the mark it left behind though. I reach for another handful of weeds and got stuck in my ring finger. “OW!” I cried again. Now I know darned well it wasn’t something I grabbed because it was on the back of my finger! It reminded me of nettles. Did I just brush up against one? You don’t have to grab those things to get stung by them. I reached for another handful of weeds and I got stung on my forearm.
Bees!
I didn’t see them, I didn’t hear them but it was bees! I know it was. I scrambled to get up, fell on my ass and took another sting before I could crab-walk a few feet away and get to my feet.
Stop laughing, it wasn’t that funny.
I waited for a minute or two for the bees to calm down then I went back and looked for their nest. The bees were still pretty mad but I edged closer and closer and I did finally spot their paper nest down in the weeds. (In the picture it’s the gray area behind the bees.) They are paper wasps.
“Get the wasp and hornet spray!” I hear you cry.
No. I don’t want to kill them. They aren’t really doing anything wrong and they aren’t really in a place where they are not supposed to be. They built their paper nest in the weeds, where it belongs and they stung an intruder, a threat to their nest (that was me), just as they were designed to do. But how am I going to finish weeding my flowers?
I thought about it and I know that the bees and wasps are not very active when it gets colder. Our mornings are cool — upper 40’s to low 50’s this time of year — if I go out first thing, maybe I can pull it up and toss it in the weeds. So the next morning I get up and let the dogs out first thing and I glanced over at my flower bed and down at my bare feet and thought, nope, not right now. That grass is cold and wet on bare feet first thing in the morning. You know how I know? Cause Itsy went a little far a couple of times and I had to go out and get her and bring her back — in my bare feet! You’d think I’d learn to put my shoes on before going out, wouldn’t you.
About an hour later, after I’ve had some coffee and I’m dressed, replete with shoes, I decide to see if the bees were up yet. I walked over to the nest and they were all still huddled together. I couldn’t really tell which weed the nest was attached to because of all the tall grasses surrounding it, and maybe it was more than one, so gingerly (and with one eye on the bees) I reached for the grass at the base of the nest. I pulled gently and I could see I didn’t have the right weeds in my hand, but I did wake the bees up. I’d better hurry, I thought and reached for a another handful of weeds.
“OW!” one of them got me. I didn’t need to be told again to leave their nest alone so I gave up for the day.
The next morning, determined to get the wasps out of the flower bed, I put on my shoes before going out and while the girls, Itsy and Ginger, were doing their morning duty, I went over to the flower bed and looked for the nest. I couldn’t find it.
Yeah! They packed up and left town! I thought. Then I spotted it, I’d pulled some of the supporting weeds from the nest the morning before and it was drooping almost to the ground. The bees were cold and sluggish. I could see which weeds the nest was attached to so as quietly as I could, without anymore movement of the weeds as I could help, I plucked the nest with it’s herd of bees on it, carried it ten feet to the edge of the yard and tossed it into the weeds.
And I didn’t look back.
And with that we will call this one done.
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