How do you kill a wasp nest?

Every experienced farm girl knows to check the house and surrounding areas for wasp nests in the spring, not in early summer after you just faced a swarm of them. I saw one, then a few days later I was in my backyard and was surrounded by 5 or 6. They seemed to be interested in the underside of the patio table. I take a look. There it is, an almost empty nest.

How do you kill a wasp nest? Too late in the day to go out and get spray. Not to worry, you can kill them with soapy water. Soapy water? Why would I buy spray, then? I tried some suggested home-made trap first,

That is an empty Gatorade bottle, cut off the top third and turn the top over so the narrow top spout is now inside the bottle, fill the bottle with soapy water and put something sweet (like honey) down in the spout. The idea is that the wasp will be lured into the trap, can't get out, and drowns. Here is a wikiHow version,

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Wasp-Trap

The trap must take more patience than I have. An hour later and the wasps are still crawling around the outside of my trap. The wasps are slowing down, which they do at night, so I filled a spray bottle and sprayed them with soapy water and watched them slowly die. Then I sprayed the nest and dislodged it, oops, more wasps, I sprayed them too. I have to say they were moving pretty slow, not flying at me, so it wasn't so scarey to spray them.

Now I know, check for wasp nests in spring and dislodge them before the wasps hatch, if you can't reach them, then they are probably not anywhere where they will hurt anyone, so leave them alone, they are good for the garden.

The sweet peas are about done. I harvested enough this year to actually cook some peas. It wasn't that I planted more, I only planted one more this year, but because I could plant them on time, they sprouted more peas. Once the sweet peas are done, I can rip out the plants and make some room for the cucumber and the beans.

Here are the bean plants,

The cucumber has flowers,

Take a look at the huge broccoli,

This is only a week after the picture I have up top. I did not mean to plant tomatoes and they are taking up more room than I planned, but still I am amazed at how I had tiny plants surrounded by dirt only a few weeks ago and now I am pretty much out of room. The other big leaf plant is the cauliflower, which is supposed to be difficult to grow, but I had another one that I had to pull out, not enough room. I'm having the same problem with the regular peas, two plants finally came up and I really only have room for one.

A few days after I took this I harvested my first hand full of raspberries,

Raspberries already? It is still June! I dare you to be unhappy picking raspberries.

The property manager called, seems the owner is coming to view his properties in the next few weeks. The property manager hasn't done one thing I asked him to in almost two years, now, quick, he wants to know if there are any issues he should deal with. There isn't much really, and my expectations of the property manger are nonexistent, but I have some of my own cleaning up to do so the owner can see I am a dream tenant and not think about raising my rent.

Watching Blueberries Turn Blue

If you thought I was kidding about how fast things can grow here, here are the peas and the blueberries less than 12 hours after I harvested all the peas and there were no blue blueberries,





It felt like I actually watched the blueberries turn blue. Blueberries are not as easy to harvest as raspberries. Raspberries pull off easily when they are ready, but blueberries pull off the same, ready or not. Blueberries should be blue all over with no reddish spots, which is hard to tell when they grow in big bunches. I've tried a few and the ones that are really ready are sweet, the too early ones are a bit sour.

What I thought were carrots growing in the middle of the vegetable planter are tomatoes. You would think I would know the difference, but I know I did not plant tomatoes. Either I did by mistake, or one of my seed packages is mismarked. The tops of my carrots are really tall and Sarah taught me how to tell if the carrot is ready. You dig around the base of the carrot to see the top of the carrot and how wide in diameter it is. I checked a few of mine, which were still fairly small, but I pulled them to help make room for more carrots too close by,



These are heirlooms that are different colors and one of them ran out of soft soil and started to grow sideways. Even small, carrots still taste the same and are crunchy. That is my third harvested head of lettuce and I've eaten three salads with my home grown lettuce this week.

Someone moved in next door. When the house went up for sale there was a steady stream of people driving or stopping by the house for a few days and then nothing for a few months. My new neighbor moved in about a week ago and quickly replaced the front yard left over cement decoration with flowers. It appears to be a single woman with a rabbit, no dog, yay! She moved in just in time to look at the flooded alley,





I think that is the karaoke singer bossing some guy digging in the hole. They have since filled up the hole, but left orange tape and cones on each side, and there is still flooding water. Water is a big deal here and standing water is a big deal everywhere. Every house in Boise has a backflow prevention assembly, which is used to protect the water supply from contamination or pollution due to backflowing water.

Backflow is the reversal in the flow of water from a potential source of contamination back to the potable (or clean) water supply. An example is having a garden hose in a bucket of soapy water at your home, and having backflow event occur causing that soapy water to "backflow" into the drinking water portion of your home.

From Wikipedia:

"A backflow prevention assembly is used to protect water supplies from contamination or pollution due to backflow.

In water supply systems, water is normally maintained at a significant pressure to enable water to flow from the tap, shower etc. When pressure fails or is reduced as may happen if a water main bursts, pipes freeze or there is unexpectedly high demand on the water system, the pressure in the pipe may be reduced and may allow contaminated water from the ground, from storage or from other sources to be drawn into the system.

Back pressure is another way that an undesirable contaminant may enter potable water piping. Sources of back pressure may be pumps in the water distribution system, boilers, heat exchanging equipment, or power washing equipment. In these cases there may be an almost constant risk of overcoming the static water pressure in the piping. To reduce the risk of contamination, a backflow preventer can be fitted. A backflow preventer is also important when chemicals are used, for instance for commercial/industrial descaling (boilers) or when bleaches are used for residential power washing.

To prevent contamination due to back pressure, some regulatory regimes require an air gap or mechanical backflow prevention assembly between the delivery point of mains water and local storage or use.[1] Where submerged mains inflow is permitted a backflow prevention assembly is required, which protects the potable water system from contamination hazards."

This just happened in Boise recently, where polluted water from an empty house made the neighbors sick. So, I think I have to call the water company and report the broken pipe, who knows if my neighbors have a working assembly or if they are polluting the neighborhood water. And in case you were wondering, the karaoke singer never shut up the entire time the guy was digging.

If I was my new neighbor, besides not buying a house with a backyard looking at my neighbor's outdoor stage, I would have planted a row of fast growing trees between my house and the alley. Because she planted flowers right away, I figure she must be an owner, not a renter.

The temple down the street is having "Deli Days" this weekend. Boise is short on deli food, not very many Jewish people, unlike the San Fernando Valley where I grew up, so I think I will walk over today and have a corned beef on rye. You can only eat so much salad.

The Abundance of Summer

The growing season is short here, but some things just suddenly take off, one day there are just flowers and the next day there are full grown vegetables.



I harvested the first round of sweet peas, by the time they are done that corn stalk will be really tall and the cucumber in front will start to take over and have cucumbers. I read that you can grow corn and let the sweet peas use it as a trellis, but it seemed to me that means you have to plant the corn too early.



The broccoli is getting big and some of the lettuce is about ready. Around the broccoli is some of those heirloom carrots, which are supposed to be colors besides orange, that Sarah gave me. I pulled up one of them too early (I need to learn some patience with seeds and underground vegetables) and it was two inches long and purple. Sarah said her broccoli got buggy and she pulled it up, and I figure the cauliflower may have the same problem, but they sure look good now.



In front of the bare spot in the vegetable planter are two cauliflower, I will probably lose one that broke at the base of the stem, I blame Cruiser and I think he laid down on it. Besides the attraction of that nice warm dirt, the cats like to play with earthworms, which are abundant in this planter. The bare spot is where I planted peas that did not come up. Behind the broccoli are bush beans that are a few inches high and in the middle are a row of another carrot, which for a long time I thought might be a weed. So far I have had no luck with peas, parsley, and dill seeds and just planted my second try with these. Now that the first round of carrots and lettuce are close to ready, I also planted another round of these.

Can you find the blueberry turning blue?



Now I can really tell how many raspberries I can look forward to,



Half of the herbs are on the windowsill and half are outside. I had good luck with the oregano and now have an overabundance in three pots even though I already harvested some for tomato sauce. The other pots have sage and the basil and thyme are outside. If the dill and the parsley ever come up, I will do some pot rearranging, since the idea of the little pots was that I could keep a variety of herbs indoors for winter. I do not need three pots of oregano.



Sarah gave me a cherry tomato seedling that sprouted from her prolific cherry tomato and I put it in a pot and set it with the herbs outside. Most other vegetables do not like tomatoes. The seedling just sat there the same for a few weeks and just in the last week decided to grow, making me think that you can start plants indoors, but they will not grow until the time in the season that they should.

I am finally recovered from the week of crazy weather and the power outage. I'm guessing that the wide barometer swings were too much for me because I had a week of headaches, sick to my stomach, dizziness, and no energy. Summer officially starts next week, but here it looks like it starts this weekend and we just had a week of perfect warm, clear weather.

My sixteen weeks of training for my new job starts Monday. I sat in my old job last week and wondered how I endured that kind of boredom for a year and hoped the boredom did not kill off too many brain cells. I moved my handful of stuff into my new office with a door. No more spinning top every day! I will miss Alyssa. I really did enjoy seeing her every morning and appreciated how well she understood that I need to ease into my workday.

I understand the sixteen weeks of training is intense and Monday we start with medical terminology. As someone who never liked science class and has not taken a science class since high school, I am intimidated. I'm trying to remind myself that it has only been a few years since I earned my Master's degree and I must still be capable of learning something completely new, but I have some new memory and concentration issues that I blame on menopause.

This weekend I am resting my brain and arming myself with brain food, like dark chocolate and blueberries and salmon. A guy at work wants a mural in his laundromat, so I also need to do some sketches for him. He wants one thing, his wife wants another, poor guy looks harried over it. I told him I would do sketches for a few ideas and they could both look at them and decide, maybe he can sell his idea better with a visual example. I'm not sure if doing a mural during intense training will be too much or a welcome relief.

Big Wind and No Power

A significant full moon and Venus occulting the sun were too much for Boise.

My friend asked me to go to a Buddhist meditation and darma talk last Sunday morning because she wanted to go and had never been to one. It was downtown and funny, it was really crowded. I got home, all calm and meditated, to the beginning of an incredible racket that lasted past 11 pm that night. Alternating dogs barking and kids screaming bloody murder. At 11 pm the Harley rider and the karaoke singer were still trying to entertain a two year old, who was still screaming and crying. She's tired! Put her to bed! I tried to let the noise pass through me, like a good Buddhist, but I thought about moving again instead.

Monday was hot, over 90 degrees, and that evening big winds came through town. With the wind, there was this weird grey sky, but it did not rain.



Within minutes of the start of the big winds, the power transformer in the alley blew with a big bang and my power went out. It stayed out for 30 hours, until the middle of the night Tuesday night, and made me feel unprepared.

When severe weather is coming, do not start a load of laundry. The washer was full of water when the power went out and it stayed that way for a day and a half, no way to drain it. I don't know how long it takes for it to smell, but a guy at work says 3 days. I have no cooler for the things in the fridge that will go bad, so Tuesday afternoon I went and bought one. Tuesday morning I set up the coffee maker and set it to brew before I realized I still have no power. Me with no coffee in the morning is not pretty, so I also bought a portable stove,



In the meantime, I went out for coffee Tuesday morning and got to work with wet hair really early.

It stays light late here, but I still needed the the hurricane oil lamp to read Monday and Tuesday night. I also did my meditation, since what else is there to do without power? It was a good test. No light, no laundry, no cooking, no land phone, no computer. One nice benefit is that it really quieted down, the Harley rider had no power, either.

Tuesday night it got really cold. From 90 degrees on Monday plummeting down to 40 on Tuesday. I have a gas water heater and gas heat, so I could take a hot shower, but the thermostat for the heater is electric. Gas heat, but I can't turn it on! I had to get my thermals back out and put an extra blanket on the bed. It was the heat coming on at 1:30 in the morning that woke me up to let me know I had power again.

Not much I can do about no heat, but if I move again I am looking for a place with a wood stove. I don't like the looks of a wood stove, they are not as pretty as a fireplace, but I appreciate their usefulness a whole lot more today.

52,000 homes in Idaho and Oregon were without power Monday night and 5400 were still without power Tuesday afternoon. Interesting that my neighborhood in Boise was not a priority for Idaho Power. Idaho Power's website and phone recording also provided no information, not like I could access them in a real emergency anyway, but I think they spent too much money on those smart meters and not enough on repairmen.

My boss says where she is in the country they lose power all the time, so I guess country girls need to know how to do without electricity.

Thursday night I went to the IWS annual show reception. I sat through the awards ceremony where all the old folks and sentimental favorites won awards, which did not include me. There were 50 paintings selected for the show and 25 are selected for some kind of award, which allows them into the traveling show. I was so irritated that I left the awards ceremony as soon as it was done, skipped the show juror's presentation of his work, and went to take another look at the show. There were a group of women around my painting with one talking about how much she liked it and how much she would like to have it. I told her it was my painting and thanked her, her reaction really cheered me up after that awards ceremony.

This is the painting that was in the show,



It looked completely different than anything else in the show, just like my horses painting at the Capitol show did. I do not think of myself as very creative, or as a great painter, but I do think there is an emotional quality that comes through that I do not plan, but that some people can see. Just having one person that can see it means more to me than any award.

The sun is out today and I should have a chance to clean up the mess the big winds made of the yard.

Promoted

If last spring here was especially long and cold, this one is early and hot. I keep thinking my garden should be farther along, but this is only because it feels like last year's July. Everyone is predicting a really hot summer.

Those are the sweet peas in back, which just started flowering, green and yellow peppers are to the right of the peas. Cucumber is just taking of in the ammo planter with the peas, along with one corn stalk. Those are heirloom carrots in front of the vegetable planter, mixed with some still small lettuce. At the end of the carrots is broccoli, in front and behind the carrots is cauliflower. I planted a bush bean and a pea seed in the middle, and these I marked. There is something else growing right in the middle in a row, and I can't remember what it is, different carrots or weeds? I'm still waiting to see.

Thursday morning I went to work late so I could drop off my painting for the IWS show at BSU. This meant I had the morning to enjoy the Catalpa starting to bloom and posing from Mr. Squirrel,

These shots are with a long lens inside the house and Mr. Squirrel still never took his eyes off of me.

These are one of Sarah's lilacs, which smell great, and I am always amazed at how pretty they are now compared to how bare they are in winter,

After a really difficult two weeks, I finally found out I got that promotion yesterday. There were three openings and they hired six people, one transfer and two internal promotions. I have a feeling the six will be reduced to the three at some point, which makes me feel not so special. I doesn't matter, soon I get to do something more interesting and get paid enough more to get by a little easier.

The difficult week was not just about trying to work while wondering if I would be promoted and worrying what would happen if I did not, I keep getting cornered into telling people something they do not want to hear, being perceived as something I am not, and being taken for granted. It feels like the energy of dramatic change, but to what? As pleased as I am with the promotion, I know it has nothing to do with my life's purpose, which seems to be more about helping others heal. Most people are terrified of healing, it is easier to stay in the fear that is familiar, and this week I have been really missing a teacher or guide and feeling very alone.

The bright spot is that I met a woman who told me about Journey of Souls by Michael Newton. It had a tremendous positive influence on her, so I bought it and started reading. It is case studies on subject's reports about the spirit world while under hypnotism. A few years ago I would have dismissed the book as New Age silliness, but today it rings with truth to me. I'm finding it fascinating.

I am off for a long overdue haircut with a new hairdresser. I'm not sure what happened with the old one, but for me it is part of the being taken for granted theme I mentioned.