gardening

NO TIME.

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This year has been crazy as far as finding “time” to get things done.

The normal time users are in operation:

  • Watering the gardens
  • Weeding the gardens
  • Feeding and tending to the critters

This year, however, we have been bomb-barded with the unexpected:

  • Major, constant rain fall.  Yes, this helps with the watering issues – but – it has caused Kaos in the weeding process.  I live in an arid area, not a swamp.  Our soil (lucky us!) is a great sandy-loam so most everything grows well.  This does include the weeds.  Some areas are taller than me which ticks me off.  I just can’t keep up with all of them this year.
  • I always start my Christmas shopping right after Christmas.  I get ideas from listening to family and friends at our annual Christmas party.  I decided to create three Afghans this year  – oh silly me!!  Most of my yarnie projects are done within a few hours, days or weeks; not Afghans.  They take time and I really got wild with them this year.  I decided to do my first one WITHOUT A PATTERN – EEEEKKK – WHAT WAS I THINKGING??!!  The other two are specials with a theme to them.  Both the patterns are driving me crazy.  I don’t like it when a pattern is several pages long and keeps you flipping from one page, back to another.  It gets very hard to follow.
  • The winds have been nuts!  Yes, we do get wind in Colorado, but not normally so much and so steady during the summer.  Our summers are usually dry and calm.  Yes, we can get tornados, and we have survived a couple, but those are not the norm.  We have piles of sheet metal ripped off of our barn roofs that need to be replaced before winter.  Trees have been uprooted from the heavy rains (makes the root areas too soft), and the strong winds.  They now need to be cut down and piled for our fire pit and/or local friends to use in their fire pits, grills or fireplaces.
  • The extra moisture has also brought out grasshoppers-from-hell.  These monsters are the size of old B-movie creatures – HUGE I TELL YOU, HUGE!!!!  I had one land on my arm during weeding, and I thought it was a bird – eeek!!!  Two major bugs I hate in summer are grasshoppers and cabbage moths.  They can destroy crops in days or sometimes in hours.  Tomato Horn Worms can easily be picked off and moved to a non-tomato area (love their transition to a Five-Spotted Hawk Moth) to continue their growth (Milk Weed Plants are great for this).  The large moth is awesome to see flying around.

 We start planning our garden plots in late fall.  I keep track during the previous year(s) on what worked and what did not.  Then we check our seeds and see what needs to be purchased (usually newbies because we save seeds on everything we can).  I also order more grasshopper flakes (They eat flakes.  They die.  Other hoppers eat the dead hoppers, and they die – great stuff) in the fall because by spring it’s all gone.  We finally broke down and bought a great 4-tier seed start setup.  Grow lights, heat mats, and even fans.  We used it for the first time this last spring and were shocked to see how fast things grew.  This next year I will have to tie my sister down, so she does not try to start everything so early again.  The set up can handle things up to about 6-inches tall, past that they are falling all over each other.  I had several tangled messes to untangle before placing them in the outdoor plots.

It will be interesting to see if next year will also be so weather crazy or not. 

You can also check me out at:  https://lifelessonslived.com/ for all the fun things I have learned in life.

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ARE YOU A LOST CREATOR?

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I am a creator, and I am lost.  I get so overwhelmed with the daily happenings that I have not had time to even step into my craft room (yes, I am in tears).  My crafts have been calling to me – LOUDLY!  I know that they all miss me, too.  I used to drift into my favorite room and get lost in there all day (sometimes several days – oops-haha). 

I have my yarnie stuffs that can keep me busy, but they are all for Christmas gifts right now and not as enjoyable.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE making stuff for loved ones for Christmas, but I have several other crafts I am longing for.

  • Card making
  • Beading & jewelry
  • Calligraphy
  • Drawing
  • Watercolor painting

Each of the above creativities pulls from my heart and soul.  I put meticulous moments into all that I do with them.  To me, they are my more creative endeavors. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do love my yarnie creations, but they all start with a pattern.  I say “start with” because I inevitably tweak almost every pattern I come across.  I thank the original creators for their awesome ideas, but it’s in my nature to make adjustments that just work better to me or for me.

When I am in my craft room (fyi – no yarnie stuff in there at all – not allowed!), my imagination soars!!

Lately, too many things have kept me away:

  • First, it was massive rains – I mean flooding downpours.
  • Can’t mow when it’s that wet, so had to hold off on that (yep, that came back to bite me in the butt).
  • Then, a major heat wave.  I am talking 100+ degrees – OUCH!  This, of course, caused the weeds to run amok.
  • Heat wave plus weeds equals more gardening requirements.
    • Special watering routine that now takes about 5-6 hours per day.
    • Special weeding to keep the bindweed away from the veggies.
    • Special pest control – the grasshoppers and cabbage moths are out of control!

I do have things we have done and installed this year to help:

  • Special driplines everywhere we can.
  • Natural grasshopper killer – only interests them and no other bugs (my ladybugs, mantis, and lace wings are safe).  We used to be able to order it online from a place in Montana (Planet Natural), but they changed hands, and with it, of course, went the good stuff.  I did find a very similar item online, but it has to be ordered in the middle of winter because by spring, it’s sold out.
  • Light cover cloth to keep the cabbage moths at bay.
  • We also installed five new plots this year to better target garden areas instead of having to handle a massive area.

Even with all the upgrades and helpful items, much of my day is still shot.  Noonish equals lunch and then the household chores: dishes, trash, setups for the next day, everyday day-to-day necessities.  By now, it is late afternoon and relaxing before bed (a whole other disaster-trying actually to sleep).  This is not the moment to try to pull out a creative mind.  This is also the time the yarn projects get worked on.  I can easily watch TV, relax, and work on a project without having to review the pattern continually.  Once I have the pattern down, it’s stuck.

That is one thing about being a yarnie I am thankful for, no-brainer pattern work. 

So, back to my original question: Are you a lost creator too?  What do you do to survive?

You can also check me out at:  https://helbergfarmstories.com/ for fun stories from our farm.

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Simple Day of Gardening.

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We are not getting our normal Colorado weather.  Lately, trying to garden is looking more like this:

Just trying to get to the gardens takes half the day.  Then it rains hard, and it all starts over again.  I am assuming the actual veggies we have in the plots are doing well:

The general population has no clue what it takes to create good, fresh food.  Some days it is as hard as this:

Most days (when we have our normal weather and seasons) it is like this:

Gardening really is therapeutic for me.  We have an agreement with a Honey Bee Farmer, so every year we have tons of bees all around.  On occasion, one will land on my hand or arm and rest for a moment.  I love it when that happens because it feels like everything is right in my world.  Even if the rest of the world is in turmoil, for a brief moment in time, it’s all OK.

You can also check me out at:  https://lifelessonslived.com/ for all the fun things I have learned in life.

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UGH!  IS IT JUST ME?

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For the first time since we moved here (2000), we did not start any seeds.

I know.  I know.  Say it isn’t so, but it is.  I don’t know if it is the weather (been just nuts), the scary state of the world (nut-bag in Russia), or my age (just say no), but something is really off whack this year.  If you follow my blog(s), you may have noticed that this is my first post FOR THE YEAR – SHOCKER!!  I did not even realize this until I titled this post.  I keep all of them because I am a writer at heart.  These are my stories of me, and I was dumbfounded to see that this was my first of the year – what is wrong with me?

I think I have to blame it on the weather (or climate) because I have not seen any of our spring flowers yet, and it is almost May.  The leaf buds on the lilacs and honeysuckle are just now showing up – so not normal!  I did get a minor reprieve last weekend when I heard all the frogs singing in our pond.  Their music did bring on a brief moment of spring excitement.

I almost forgot; I simply went to burn some of our trash in our burn barrel and accidentally set our south field on fire.  Our fantastic local volunteer Firemen were all over it, and there was (thank God) NO WIND!  My sister and I were looking at that field now and were impressed at how green it was.  So I think I got a bit of a boost seeing that even that dried-out field can come back to life. 

We decided to just go with seeds right in the ground this year.  The drought, the fires in our state, the crappy air (mainly smoke from all the fires and the dry dirt flying in the winds), and the battles over water have convinced us to cut way back this year on our gardens.  I will keep cleaning them up and tending when needed, but the water is the biggest fear.  I want to keep our trees going (fruit and others), and I want to start some new herbs in the herb garden, but watering this year is tough.  We have our own well (a bit of good news), but we are also very conservative in its use. 

It is too late for our regular early cold crops (broccoli, cabbage, etc.), but I can put in some root crops that we can, dehydrate, or freeze.  Our pantry is pretty full of veggies.  We purchased half of beef from our friendly local natural grower, so we have a freezer full of that.  We will be helping our other friendly local natural grower butcher their chickens later this year, which will take up another part of our 2nd freezer.  I have been trying to buy extras of things like flour, sugar, and salt, but the price of everything has gone nuts this year.  (Don’t get me started on the gas!)

Our final decision is to grow less, use less water, use more of what we already have (duh – we store it for a rainy-day situation, and this is one of those days.), relax and remember what mom used to say:

This too shall pass.

Dang, don’t ya just hate it when mom is right!  I’m pretty sure she is up in heaven yelling “I told you so” at us right now.  And life goes on.

You can also check me out at:  https://lifelessonslived.com/ for all the fun things I have learned in life.

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When Did I Move Back to Wisconsin?

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Colorado weather can be very different than most places.  We never know what is coming over the mountains or which way it is going to flow.  I have built up a pretty good sense of when to plant our starts and when to put in seeds, but not this year. It’s been a mess in more ways than one.

I am used to wet Marches, wild weather ups-and-downs in April, and then “get-it-in” Mays.  This year has been snow, winds, wet and wet, and WET.  I swear I am back in Wisconsin, and I didn’t know I was planning on a move? 

IT’S GREEN!

Yes, Colorado does get green in the spring, but it is usually the fields, gardens, and lawns that get irrigation that the green appears.  This year I am hard-pressed to find a non-green spot.  We are supposed to be a higher altitude, arid, and much drier area – WHAT HAPPENED?  I blame it on climate change since that has been messing up tons of places over the last several years. It’s either that or Mother Nature is really pissed off at us now.  Even our poor crop farmers have had a hell of a time just trying to plant their typical fields.  Everything is mud!  FYI, tractors and mud do NOT mix.

Since our greenhouse lost its cover from the tornado, the plots have been susceptible to the weather, and right now, it’s a forest.  We even have a ground cover base under all our plots, but the grasses and weeds have gotten too much rain support to slow down.  Now the wonderful world of weather is telling us to expect close to 90degrees this Saturday.  SATURDAY?  With 80s in between.  Great.  Put some majorly intense sun and heat onto those already crazy weeds and grasses, and it will be time to dig out mazes to find the plots.

Oh, and part of my job during all this moisture was to figure out where all the leaks are in our buildings, then try to plug them – hahaha.  It was easy to see where it was leaking, but not so easy to find a dry day to get out (or on top) and fix them.  Now that we will have drier weather, I have become a hurry up and get it done Lady.  Sure.  Two fake knees, 1-1/2 fake shoulders, one fake foot, ½ an index finger, and osteoarthritis up the wazoo – YOU GO GIRL!  Not!  If anyone tries to tell me that my joints don’t feel the changes in the weather, I will pop them in the nose. 

This old body got used to the dry, arid, comfortability of our beautiful Colorado.  Now every step I take and every move I make has a corresponding snap, crackle, or pop to it.  Oh, and let’s not discuss the getting down and trying to get back up again situation (yes, my dear friends who have seen me do this in action, you may laugh hysterically now), shall we.

So Wisconsin, you can have your floody spring back.  I want my dryer Colorado and I am not willing to compromise!

I am leaving you in this post with a perfect picture that my cousin sent me.  It totally sums up this spring for me:

You can also check me out at:  https://lifelessonslived.com/ for all the fun things I have learned in life.

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I CUT HER LOOSE – LOOK OUT!

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This last weekend I finally cut my sister loose and let her play in the dirt.  There are two big things in her life that bring her great joy:

  1. Playing in the kitchen because she has a passion for cooking.  
  2. Playing in the dirt, in this case it is starting seeds. 

I brought all the grow lights, heat pads, and various other seed starting items up from the shed.  It took her about two days to get “her” areas set up.  Yes, they are “her” areas as it is her job to do the starts.  My task now is to design all the plot areas on our little farm and what will go in where.

If you think about it I got shafted in this deal.  All her job is done in the house and in just 2 places:

  • Her porch (it is hers because that is where she can smoke and contemplate life issues).
  • Her kitchen (yes, I can cook in there too, but it is mostly just warming stuff for me).

I am better with the computer than she is, so I created some charts.  The first is centered around seed starting and maintaining the starts until transplant time – this is Spring.  The second I labeled Summer.  This will be my turn to track things.  It will have when and where I put in the transplants.  It will also have all my direct sowing information. 

This will be the first year in many, many years that we actually have some kind of handle on our gardens.  Too many disasters have stretched out too long for us to properly concentrate on the gardens.  The only bummer is that my body is only a fraction of what it was 10+ years ago.  Simple things like getting down on the ground (my favorite place to work on plots) and getting back up again take enormous effort.  Fake knee and shoulder joints, massive surgeries for my major joints, and replacement parts add to my dismay.  You would think they could come up with something like the Bionic Woman for replacement parts by now?

Yes youngsters, that was a real TV series, and yes oldsters, I watched it.

What a wonder it would be if I could just pull weeds stronger, faster.  I could pull my garden carts without major issues.  Best of all, I could get down on the ground and back up again, without looking like a Flamingo on ice (not a pretty sight but very funny to watch – oh, and don’t get me laughing or I will NEVER get up!).

My major task over the last 20 years is to make life easier and not harder.  So why does life want to throw a wrench into my ideas every time I turn around?  She is so wicked that way.  Wish me luck on my endeavors this year.  Maybe we will finally have a great fall harvest.  I will let you know how it goes.

You can also check me out at:  https://helbergfarmstories.com/ for fun stories from our farm.

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I HAVE TO TIE MY SISTER DOWN.

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She is only allowed to be hands-free when she goes to work or is in the kitchen.  Our seed orders are coming in, and I gave her a new “toy” this year, a seed planning, planting guide.  My BIG mistake!

Dirt is in our souls.  We grew up on a farm and will (hopefully) die on a farm.  With that said, we both share particular duties on our little patch of heaven.  She is in charge of the “starting,” and I am in charge of the transplanting and keep it running.

We go through the same mess every year.  She gets the garden bug way too early, and then I am last minute slamming things in wherever I can find the room, so they don’t die.  She gets them started far too early, and we have flowers appearing before the last frost is done.  If I don’t get them in somewhere (fast), we could lose them.  This year I have decided to tie her down to get-our-ducks-in-a-row!

She has specific orders NOT to start any seeds until our new cheat-sheet guidelines say so.  (Got it free from a fellow blogger/grower here in Colorado.)  Even though they were developed by a “foothillser,” and we are plains people, it is all Colorado.  Mountains would be very different, but the foothills are close enough. 

According to the charts, she should not be starting anything until the end of February.  Then, the only ones to start at that time are the long-term veggies.  The rest is not to be started until mid-March, and it is killing her!

I told her that she could play with her seed starter, soil mix to her heart’s content.  But she must leave the seeds in their packets!  At least the new charts are keeping her busy.  She has to list all the packets and the standard info on them.  Oh, and she also has to have them sorted by category, as well as alphabetical.  Hee hee, I can be mean when I want to.

In the meantime, I am mapping out all of our plots and planting spaces.  I am also revamping our backyard double plots into a mini-greenhouse.  I want to move our starts out there when they start getting into the hardening-off stages.  The side walls will be rollups, so I won’t have to move anything, just open the sides and let in the sun, air, and whatever.  I will try to remember to get pics as I go to share here.

I think my plan will work as long as she does not start setting seeds in the middle of the night (yes, we do wake up at all hours of the night – it’s the age curse).  I check her fingernails when I get up to make sure she isn’t trying to sneak a seed or two in.  Sisters?!?

You can also check me out at:  https://lifelessonslived.com/ for all the fun things I have learned in life.

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DO YOU LOVE YOUR BUGS?

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No, this has nothing to do with the virus.  Today, I am back to talking about chemical-free gardening stuff.  We are officially into the spring season, which for us means prepping, planting, and planning.

Our home has started this season as it should:

  • Flies and spiders sneaking into the house.
  • Little bunnies hopping all over to test our predator defenses.
  • Rhubarb, tulips, iris, and several other things, popping out of the ground.
  • Like every year – we have the Odd Thomas poking up out of the ground. Later it will be determined friend or foe and dealt with accordingly.

baby bunny

These are the standard spring bits of proof.  Then we have the oddballs:

  • I spotted my old nemesis – A WASP (Yellow Jacket) – grr!
  • A skunk has already invaded our chicken barn for the barn cat food, pee-u.
  • What would spring be without Miller moths (stay out of my hair!). It just seems a bit too early for them, but they are here.

skunk

We cut the cord a couple of years ago, so I rely heavily on the internet for my valuable data.  My email box receives tons of information – daily – that I have specifically requested (vs. T.V. which bombards with junk I did not ever want to see).  One such request is from my Joe Gardener.com, which originated on our local PBS channel while we still had satellite T.V.  His name is Joe Lamp’l, and he is just full of excellent gardening stuff.  The best part of his shows is the guests.  If he doesn’t know a lot about a specific subject, he is not afraid to go to a guest source for the nuts-and-bolts of the issue.  This email was about the Monarch Butterfly (one of my favorite good bugs – also endangered species.).

Several years ago, we were lucky to be witness to a Monarch migration.  They came in the hundreds and landed on our trees, bushes, fences, house – you name it, they were on it.  IT WAS OUTSTANDING!  They did not stay long, but we felt gifted that they chose our little piece of heaven to stop for a rest.

That one-time massive visit threw me into a frenzy to find out more about them and ways to help them survive.  I was not the only one that was enthralled by them.  Dr. Agrawal is a professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Department of Entomology at Cornell University, was one of his guests, and spent time learning all he can about the Monarch.

This recent post by Joe shares a ton of great information, and EVERY gardener should learn.  It doesn’t matter if you grow for beauty, for food, or both; you need to learn to save our nature’s helpers.

147-Monarchs and Milkweed: A Precarious Struggle Between Life and Death

MARCH 12, 2020 | GROW, PODCAST

(Please feel free to join me in the Monarch Watch group to help monitor the migration and population.)

The big thing that caught my eye was “monarchs and milkweed,” of which I had forgotten how much the two are connected.

milkweed and monarch

A couple of years ago, a milkweed plant sprouted in our front yard – all on its own.  I took that as a sign and saved the pods.  Remembering back to my childhood, we used to love popping the pods and watching the feathery seeds fly everywhere (F.Y.I. Dad hated it when we did that because they are a weed, and as such, he did not want them in his food fields.  Nothing worse than having to walk a field and handpick weeds – wait – picking rock was worse.).

The milkweed is crucial to Monarch survival.  Knowing this, I cherished the newbies on our property and encouraged them to continue.  We do have hay and corn farmers around us, not for human food but animal food.  We also have bees and a Beekeeper, that has our blessing to use our place as needed to allocate his 600+ colonies of honeybees every year.  The bees love the milkweed just as much as the Monarch, but for a different reason.  The article goes on to explain this in more detail was some fantastic pictures.  I hope that all of you read his article – gardener or not.

HAPPY SPRING – HAPPY GARDENING!

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I COME FROM A FAMILY OF BULLHEADS.

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No, I am not talking about the fish (although they are one of my favs when they are in-season).  I am talking about being stubborn.  Stubborn to the point of sinking your heels into the dirt, and not giving up till hell freezes over.

bullhead fish

We finally had a couple of days of true February weather – but not enough.  This has brought out my bullhead side.  I am determined to have good gardens this year (not great, just good, and I will be happy) no matter what life throws at us.

I have given myself three main goals for this year:

  1. Continue to take my online learning classes and write more (and better, I hope).
  2. Get the gardens all back in order again.
  3. BE HAPPY.

I have a passion for a lot of things, crafting, writing, gardening, to name a few, but do not feel as if I am a professional at any one thing.  I hope that by the end of this year, I will feel like a pro at least one of my passions.

OCD crafting

The gardens have been a mess since the year of the fire (2014).  When the fire happened, I also had a severe infection in my left-hand index finger (from a cut on the job), which became Mersa.  In the course of taking care of the finger, my Surgeon discovered I have severe osteoarthritis (why is it never just “1” thing with me?).  The gardens got neglected because of all that mess, and my depression (yep that has been severe since the fire also) just took over and made me feel defeated before I even began on all our gardens.  Well, baby, my bullhead is back and in full force!

The last of my three is be happy, which has seemed to elude me.  I have moments of happiness, it’s just not been an on-going feeling of joy until now.  Not sure what has changed (except my new moon according to my Astrological sign), but I am feeling more empowered.  This is a great thing for me because it has been sorely missed over that last five years.

So, gardens beware!  I am on my bullheadedness (is this a word?) and plan on using it – grr!

HAPPY GARDENING!

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FYI:  One of the Bloggers I follow is called Better Hens & Gardens, and they have been kind enough to post an easy-to-understand article about the difference between seed types (Heirloom vs. GMO vs. GE, etc.), and I found it a great read to share – she here it is if you would like clear-cut information:

GARDEN SEEDS – GE, GMO, HEIRLOOM – WHAT’S IT MEAN?

I hope that if you are planning a garden this year for feeding your family, you will take a moment and read their helpful information.

*************************************************************************************

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EVER HEARD THE PHRASE “BUG UP YOUR BUTT?”

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Living in any kind of space that promotes bugs is just asking for this, but I never EVER before thought it was a real thing.

Decades I have mumbled behind angry people that they have a “bug up their butt” and never thought twice about the phrase before yesterday.

I woke up and started my day as usual:

  • Coffee
  • Check email
  • Listen to news
  • Wash face, wake up, get dressed, and get going on the day.

During all of these starting moments, I comfortably stay in my PJ’s.  Once I have actually started to wake up, my next task is to get ready to greet the world (NEVER IN PJ’s).  So I wander down to my bedroom (yep, it’s on the lower level of the house, and it is below ground level very important to note this.), change out of my wonderfully friendly PJ’s and into my daily gotta-do-chores clothes.  Right now, because it is still very hot here, it is cut off shorts and a grubby tee-shirt.  Perfect for doing farm and garden work comfortably.  Off with the old, on with the new and back upstairs.

I decided that this mornings breakfast was going to be a sausage, egg, and cheese toasted English muffin.  I start with my plastic microwave container, open the fridge and place a small handful of shredded cheese into it.  Then I open the lower freezer and grab a frozen sausage patty and place it on top of the cheese.  Then I grab one egg, break it in a bowl, add a bit of milk and scrambled the snot out of it.  Once good and mutilated I pour that over the sausage/cheese stuff.

  • Cover with guard (because sometimes it will blow)
  • Set timer for 3 minutes
  • Head over to the toaster.

I grabbed my coffee (because we all know you can’t function without it in the morning – this morning being proof that I had not had enough yet.) and went to the bread box.  Opened it, pulled out a single English muffin, cut it in half, and plopped it into the toaster.

Now the fun part:

While listening to some great 70’s music going on in the office (where I check my daily mail), humming a bit, sniffing one of my fav smells of toasting bread,  and waiting for the ding from the microwave; I felt a poke in my left butt cheek.

Now, we have some tall nasty grass seeds out here.  Once the grasses get dried out, the seeds start to fly everywhere.  They also have a bad tendency to dig themselves (pointed end of course) into clothes.  Mostly my socks but I have found them in other places as well.  Most of my gardening is done with me sitting right on the ground (usually on my carpet pad), so it is not unusual for me to get an occasional grass seed stuck in my shorts and poking my butt.  I should have been so lucky this morning.

grass seed stuck in cloth

(you can see the darn things stuck in this cotton rag)

So I casually reach back to try to scratch the seed lose but low-and-behold it was a much large bump, AND IT MOVED??!!!  Immediate removal of shorts and underwear (just in case it was down at that level), followed by a ton of shaking and dancing about.  I should also know that the adrenaline was in DEFCON 9-million now.  I totally forgot about my breakfast and immediately went to hunting the predator in my pants.

jim-carrey-happy-dance

AH HA – A LARGE BLACK BEETLE IT IS!

lg black beetle

(This is a copy of one from the yard – they run in packs you know!)

By the time I turned back to stomp on the monster from my pants (Oh, a possible idea for a new scary movie?), the sucker had disappeared?

I spent the next hour scouring the kitchen floor (main reaction site) to no avail.  The monster got away – JUST GREAT.  I spent the whole rest of the day scratching my entire body afraid of finding some other unwanted critter.  Luckily nothing.

The rest of the day was nice and calm and off to bed as usual.

I woke up about 2 am feeling an urge for a bathroom visit and when I turned on the light, guess what crawled in under my bedroom door to greet me – UGH!!!

I got my slippers on ready to pounce on my attacker, and he disappeared again – GRR.

So, now I have to add another step to my daily routine – completely shake out, turn inside-out, shake again just incase on all clothes I decide to put on.  Next thing you know the sucker will find my bra and bite – jerks!

P.S. Hope this made you giggle as much as I still do, thinking about it all – and my you never think of the phrase “bug up your butt” the same way again.

(Oh, and I almost forgot the other fun thing from yesterday.  This sucker landed on my leg while I was weeding:

  3-in wasp 9-10-19

I caught this pic of it on the tree and thought it was scary/cool, till it landed on me then I cut it in half with my nippers – NOT taking any chances.  Found out is harmless to humans it is:   Pigeon Tremex Horntail and the Giant Ichneumon Wasp)