ME vs BUGS

So help me Hannah, if one more maple bug even so much as touches me I'm going to ...

I'm going to ...

Well, I'm going to cringe, shudder with revulsion, and shoo it away as fast as I can, that's what I'm going to do!  Just like the thousand other times they've touched me this fall.

You think I exaggerate.  I do not exaggerate.  A thousand is probably low-balling it.

I'm not a scaredy-cat.  I'm made of pretty tough stuff, actually.  There was a time when I waited for my knight in shining armor to save me from life's terrors but I have become much more self reliant.  I can dispatch a garter snake if I find one too close to my house and I have mastered setting and emptying mouse traps all by myself.  A year ago I got myself a self propelled mouse trap with its own disposal unit built right in - he's the best thing since sliced bread.

Not to damage the Knight's ego I still let him deal with skunks though.  Can't have him feeling like he's not needed.

But that still leaves me battling the insect kingdom.  This time of year it's a full time job.

Wood tick season was short.  Don't know what was up with that - maybe the species is dying out?  Hope springs eternal.

The summer was so dry mosquitoes weren't much of a problem.  They were not missed.

The grandchildren came for visits and in time honored grandchild tradition held the doors open for what seemed like hours at a time.  The little darlings went home and I eventually got the fly population down to pre visit numbers.

The odd bee always finds his way into the house. I have no idea where they come from but I do my best to do 'catch and release' with them.  I know we need them to feed the world.

Then came fall and I picked my tomatoes.  As per usual tiny fruit flies followed them in and infested the house.  I set up a pop bottle/stale beer trap.  At least they die happy.

Next, the barn fly population took a look at their tiny little watches and realized they were supposed to be moving in for canning season.  Instantly the windows and doors were covered with the free loading buggers.  I honestly have no clue where those icky, yucky, squishy striped flies come from but they now outnumber the regular flies two to one.  I loath them all with equal passion.

I wish I could say that was the end of it, but oh no, there were still the maple bugs to come.  I would rather deal with spiders. 

All decked out in red and black and creeping forward in their slow, insidious, mindless march they have infiltrated my house.  Google says they are looking for a warm place to bunk down for the winter.  I say they invade my personal space with the single purpose of grossing me out.  Google also says they are harmless.  Google hasn't seen what happens when a maple bug lands stealthily on my shirt and then makes its way up to my collar.  I tell you, what happens when I feel something that big crawling up my neck, well it's NOT harmless.

I know it's a lovely fall.  I agree that still having flowers in bloom in October is something to enjoy.  I also wish it would snow.  Like a ton.  Maybe three tons.  Just to make those creepy bugs go away

Until then my weapon of choice never leaves my side.  The guy who invented the vacuum cleaner is my hero.

 

LOLLYGAGGING

The first thing the Farmer said to me this morning was “Another day, another dollar.”

This is true, even this year of extreme heat and hap hazard rains, because we no longer put our own crop in.  The secret to making money at farming is to rent your land out to someone else and leave the expense, gamble and stress to them.  If you enjoy working the land and the feelings of pride and fulfillment associated with putting in and taking off a crop (which he does) it is easy to get a job doing just that.  The really neat thing about farming this way if you get a guaranteed pay check for your work without having to worry about the futures markets, crop insurance or the latest insect or disease to come along and cost a crazy money to deal with.

They are well into harvest, the swathing and combining and baling and fixing goes on day after day, but he will get his dollar – it’s a sure thing.

That’s not to say he isn’t getting worn down with the long hours and demanding pace.  There is no such thing as a day off when the weather is good in September.  He leaves the yard by 7:30 in the morning and I don’t see him again until after dark unless I’m called to help him move to the next field.  I have explained the concept of retirement to him on several occasions.  He doesn’t get it.

As we lingered over our second cup of coffee he asked “So, what are you going to do today?”

I listed off a whole bunch of things on my agenda: we are having company overnight so I had bedrooms to prepare and a supper to plan, it’s the Labour Day weekend when I usually wash windows, the gardens all needed clean up, I should go into town and visit his mother, the grass needs mowing again ...

I ended off with “Any or all of these may or may not get done today, who knows?”  I’m retired and actually understand the concept.

“So, you’re going to lollygag then?”

Well, that’s not the way I would have described it, but okay, maybe I am.  As I said, I am retired and have a good grasp of what that means.

He’s been off to earn his dollar for two hours now and so far I have made up the beds, decided on the supper menu, cleared up the breakfast dishes, wandered around the flower beds, weeding as I went, and now I find myself at the computer writing this blog – something that wasn’t even on my list.  I also spent some time scrolling through Facebook (that genuinely is lollygagging).  It’s not as much fun as usual with all the election propaganda these days and there is only so much time in the day to spend deleting the anti-vax posts.

I am left pondering what my next move will be.  I just got a text saying my company won’t be here till suppertime so I have a good block of time to get something done, or I could carry on with my lackadaisical lollygagging.

I kind of like the sound of that.

 

ALL OVER IT

Remember, way last spring when the blush was still on the rose, so to speak.

Remember how I couldn’t wait for the snow to melt?  How my big front window housed a double decker plant table so all the babies I started had a clear shot at the strengthening sunlight?  How I went through my garden seeds multiple times, making sure I had enough of everything? How I monitored the night time temperatures constantly, hardly able to wait until I could trust the safety of plants in my little greenhouse?

I was all over that like white on rice.  I couldn’t wait to get my hands into earth, watch things grow, plan where things would go.  So exciting!

And then, do you remember how I couldn’t wait till my farmer got out there and tilled my garden?  And how satisfying it was to get the potatoes planted?  And then the rest of the garden?  And how this year, for the first time, I didn’t try to do all my deck planters the same day?  How much easier that went?  And how, while it was sad that not one single foxglove made it through the winter, it was fortunate that they were already dead because they would have been trampled to death anyway when we revamped the deck.  That would have made me even sadder.

Do you recall how happy I was when the rows started pushing through. Straight lines of lettuce, swiss chard, peas and beans ... and those 12 hours of radishes before the flea beetles found them.  Do you remember the very next day when the weeds all showed up too?  I can’t say that I was all over that, but I was on top of it ... for one day.  I think it was June 13^th.  That was a very good day.

Do you remember how lush and green everything was back then?  The grass was soft to walk on and it smelled so good when I mowed it.  And there were tiny purple violets everywhere.  And there were hummingbirds and orioles at the feeders. And there was no stagnant water to breed mosquitoes?  Ah!  Those were the days.  I was all over that too.

It was a little worrisome though - the dry conditions - but my farmer came through with a watering system from the dugout that he’s been talking about for a couple years and had started last fall.  With no threat to our well I was able to water to my heart’s content.  I tell you, I have been all over that!  While other gardens were stunted in their tracks my flowers bloomed, my vegetables thrived.

Then the extreme heat set in.  It was time to work on the deck and the heat was just ugly out there.  The grass went crunchy, water or not the vegetable leaves began to curl and flowers dropped their blossoms, plants desperate to propagate the next generation cut their life span short and went to seed immediately.  The only things left green in my lawn by the end of July were dandelions and they smell awful when you mow them.

We’ve been lucky enough to get a couple rains but you won’t remember me talking about them – it feels like bragging when so many others have received nothing wet from the skies all summer long.  Crops are stunted or dead, watering holes are all but empty, pastures nibbled to the ground, and feed depleted.  The sale off of beef herds is as inevitable as it is heart-breaking.

This next week I’ve been invited to go camping with some family members for a kind of mini reunion.  When we came up with this plan it sounded like a great idea – girl time, lazy meals, away-from-the-maddening-crowd stuff.  I was all over that kind of break.

Because I’m officially on to the other kind of all over it as far as my yard and garden is concerned.  I’m over weeding – you should see the mess I’ve got going on out there.  I need the tractor and tiller to swipe through again.  I’m over everything but cucumbers, tomatoes and corn.  The planters have either baked to death or bloomed themselves out.  Yep, I’m pretty much completely over the summer of 2021.

And, talk to me after a week camping at the lake ... the temperatures are supposed to soar to new heights for the next three days.  I’m betting I will soon be over holidays too.  Maybe a person should start Christmas shopping ... in air conditioned malls.

I could so be all over that.

 

COOL, PRECIOUS COOL

The first thing I do every morning is get up and lock the cool in.  It’s the most important job of the day.

I can’t remember when this hot streak started (I think my brain is a little baked) but the ‘normal hot’ days have been few and far between.  Mostly it’s been day after day of unrelenting abnormally high temperatures and smoke haze from forest fires over a thousand miles away.  Locally we won in Mother Nature’s where-should-I-scatter-my-thunderstorms-this-year lottery.  Whereas almost all of the prairies are parched, crispy fried, and crawling with grasshoppers, small pockets here and there are green again because they got rain.  We live in one of them.

Also, there are fields that are black again.  That’s what happens when the moisture from above doesn’t fall in liquid form.  A hail storm can bash a crop right back into the ground.  Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on how much hail insurance was purchased for that field.  If you are a farmer there is no need to travel to Vegas to gamble big money.

As this heat wave goes on and on I’ve been trying to come up with some coping skills to get through the torture.  Some things not to try would be building a deck on the south side of the house, or ignoring the weeds in hopes that they will go away on their own.  I try the weed experiment every year with the exact same results every single time.  I think I may be a slow learner.

2021 is not going to be a stellar year for garden harvest.  The peas are done before the end of July and the beans are only half trying.  The carrot and beet crop look plentiful, the corn loves its heat units so the few seeds that germinated are doing great and the potatoes got over watered and then rained on – half the plants are dead.  Who saw that coming in the middle of a drought?

On the other hand, the two watermelon plants I bought on impulse and plunked in the ground think they are in Mexico and are growing like mad.  It’s really hard to tell what’s going on in my tomato jungle but I think there will be quite the harvest there too.  My pumpkins are coming back from the hail shredding their leaves – if Halloween comes at Christmastime we’ll be fine.

That’s life on the outside.  Whenever possible this summer, I’ve been hanging out inside.

This may explain how the weeds got so big on me.

The second thing I do every morning is check the weather forecast.  Well, no, that’s a lie.  First I need coffee, and then I check the weather.  Not just what’s going to happen that day, but how many more days of hideous heat are still to come?  Just so you know, the long term goes as far as mid August with no end in sight.  And as important (and depressing) as those daytime temps are, the night time temps are even more crucial.

You see our house doesn’t have air conditioning, all we have is a very large ceramic tile floor which is a very inexpensive way to cool a house as long as the nights are cool.

 The last thing I do every day is open all the windows and let the cool in.  Ceramics are a fantastic conductor of heat and cold so the cooler the night the cooler the house is the next day. 

While I sip my precious coffee I check out the outdoor temperature.  Anything lower than 15 gets a little happy dance.

 

 

SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR JULY 2021

I remember the good old days ... past summers when other places in the world made the news because they were stuck in a heat wave they couldn’t shake.  While I listened to the news reports about checking on elderly neighbours and drinking lots of water I would always be thankful that I wasn’t where ever the heat was.  I don’t do heat well at all.

If you want proof come and visit me  – I will be the sunburnt puddle of sweaty goo waiting for the sun to go down.  I’m pretty sure Turbo, our Husky/German Shepherd cross is dealing with this heat better than I am – and he’s wearing a full fur coat.

Due to my brain melting I am not quite sure when this blast furnace began but I think we’ve been at it for two weeks.  And during those two weeks we did renovations to our deck ... on the south side of our house ... in a yard that protects us from prevailing winds – even when you’re dying for a breeze.  You know that you are down to appreciating the basic necessities of life when moving air from the south or the east feels heaven sent.  Come to think of it, maybe it was.

As the heat doesn’t seem to want to leave I am compiling a list of things to keep us alive until it snows.

First of all: WATER.  We buy our drinking water and I usually have a 3 bottle rotation going on.  During the deck building period we were up to 5 five gallon bottles on the go over the same amount of time.  True, we had company helping us with the deck project and the drinking, but still.  I couldn’t believe how much water we went through.

 And ice cream. 

And freezie pops.

 And iced tea.

 And Gatorade. 

And propane.  Like heck I was cooking anything inside!

I heartily recommend having A/C in your house.  We don’t, but I highly recommend it.

Sadly we were unable to cool down grandchildren with a sprinkler or pool, which led to the happy discovery of Toonie Tuesdays at the Redvers pool.  It’s amazing how out of touch a grandma can be.

 Water is on everyone’s minds these days as we all wonder when the well might go dry.  We are not down to rationing showers yet (thank goodness because people get to smelling a bit off when it’s this hot) but with no rain in the forecast these things are beginning to worry me.

I admit my worries about dishwashers and laundry and showers pale in comparison to herds of cattle with bare pastures, no hay to cut for winter and no water to drink.  I sure feel for those in the cattle business, this is serious stuff.

I wish I could say I had a strategy to overcome heat and drought but humans have been trying to entice or appease the rain gods since time began without much luck.  I’m not opposed to a nationwide rain dance ... and I’m sure I read somewhere that they are more effective if done in the nude ... but how about we play it safe and apply Covid rules?  Dance nude all you want ... in the privacy of your own home.  Possibly wear a mask – the dignity you save may be your own!

But, good luck on drumming up rain.  You’ll be everyone’s hero if you manage that!

 

THE GREAT AWAKENING

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – in a former life I just know I was a bear.

I mean, their whole lifestyle appeals to me: the wandering around in scenic, natural settings, the not being judged for growling at people who annoy me, and eating everything in sight all summer so I can sleep all winter and wake up skinny.  What’s not to love about that?

What’s got me thinking about this now, though, is the feeling of déjà vu as we are being released from the restrictions we’ve lived with for the past year.  I am positive that I’ve felt this before. 

It feels like the long, drab isolation of winter is easing off.

It feels like the promise of sunshine is once again warming our world.

It feels like the dawn of a new day as we stumble out of confinement, gripping our coffee mugs and squinting while our eyes adjust to the light.

Yep, I am certain that this is how it feels to come out of hibernation.  I have been here before!

It’s interesting to hear people talk about what they are going to do with this new found freedom.  There are those who can’t wait to get on a plane and go somewhere far away.  There are grandparents who just want to go one province over to see their grandkids before they’ve all grown up.  There are those who have been waiting for elective surgery and are praying their delay in treatment is almost at an end. 

Parents are rejoicing that the threat of home schooling will not be hanging over their heads.  Doctors and nurses are can hardly believe they made it through  ... and I won’t say unscathed.

Restaurants that have struggled to hang on are dreaming of just having a regular day with regular staff serving their regular menu to a regular crowd at their regular tables and – hallelujah! – making a regular income.

Employees and employers are assessing what going back to work means after all these months of working remotely from home.  The future of the work world may end up being a hybrid of home and office that works better for everyone.

There are gardeners and bakers out there who would have never learned they had such talents had Covid not forced them to try.

There are the people who kept the food delivery system rolling, and the transportation system moving, and the public safety system in place at grave danger to themselves and the families they went home to every night.  It has been a learning experience for us all to realize what an essential service it is to pick and package fresh produce or drive a bus or stock grocery store shelves.  Be sure to smile and thank them ... won’t it be wonderful to see smiles when we can finally take off our masks?

And, let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of people who are no longer with us.  This past year has been restrictive and unpleasant but we’re still here to talk about it.  We are the lucky ones.

Yes, as I sit in the warm sunshine just outside my den and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light I reflect all that has gone on during this winter of our discontent and ponder what I will do with these fresh new summer days ahead.

 I will have a ceremonial obliteration of a bottle of hand sanitizer.  I will decommission the last facemask I had to use and press it between two pages of a big book like they used to do with souvenirs because that’s all I want it to be.  I plan to stop and chat with people not from my own household in the middle of grocery aisles less than six feet apart and going the wrong direction ... just because I can.

But one thing I think I will leave off my summer ‘to do’ list.  I will not be showing off my beach body.  For some reason Covid hibernation didn’t work like regular hibernation does.

What happened to the ‘waking up skinny’ part?

 

FAMILIARITY

The proverbial ‘they’ say that familiarity breeds contempt. 

While this may be true, spending time and getting to know others can also be hilarious.  I’m talking animals here, humans are too complicated to be trusted.

I’ve mentioned Turbo before.  He’s a beautiful dog: smart, loving, gentle, tolerant, but he’s not without his quirks.  For one thing, he doesn’t trust doors.  The wide open kind are okay, and the fully shut ones are safe too, but the half ajar ones are to be avoided.  Even if his food dish and water are on the other side he’ll hang back and give us his sad eyes treatment but won’t try to get past it on his own.  He was two years old when we met him – it’s always makes me wonder, somewhere in his puppyhood did he lose a battle with a door?

Another idiosyncrasy is due to genetics.  He’s part Husky and apparently they are very concerned with keeping their pack together. If either one of his humans has failed to return by sundown he lies at the garden doors and watches for them to return.  If they are away overnight he’s a very anxious dog.  I guess this makes sense for a breed expected to pull heavy sleighs around – you would want the whole team there to help with the work.

He’s not much of a hunter though.  Oh, he thinks he is.  Any time the farmer goes out to bring the gopher population down Turbo’s out there like a dirty shirt, running from one hole to another, digging wildly, snorting dirt up his nose, catching nothing and scaring away anything that the farmer might have had a shot at.  Once when we were out for a walk he actually got one.  I don’t know who was the most surprised – me, the gopher, or the dog – but the triumphant march home was like a victory parade at the end of WWll.

Because of Turbo’s feeble hunting skills and the fact that mice like to move in for the winters I decided last fall that we would expand our pet population by one cat.  We acquired Thundercat in late summer – a black, nondescript half-grown kitten - hoping that he would take his job seriously.  The cat set about claiming the house as his own and tormenting the dog with way too much purring and cuddling.  Or  sneak attacks while he was sleeping.  Many times have those sad puppy dog eyes asked me why we needed a cat.  Much as I hate to hurt his feelings I have repeatedly explained about unwanted varmints and his lack of prey drive.

By this spring the newly renamed cat (Turbo’s choice, can’t be used in polite company) had earned his ‘you get to stay’ papers and rated a trip to the vet for the shots to keep him healthy and the surgery to keep him home.  He is never not hunting and there are mouse carcasses delivered daily: I like that in a cat.

In fact, I’ve kind of grown to like him.  So much so that when he disappeared for a day I was quite concerned that a coyote might have made lunch out of him.  It wasn’t just the $100.00 vet bill, I actually liked him.  I looked, I called, I asked Turbo – nada. 

Almost a complete day after his last sighting I went to get in my car to go to town.  I opened the driver’s door and looked across to the passenger’s seat at one very disgruntled cat.  He stood up, glared at me, and uttered a meow that unmistakably translated into “Where the #$@& have you been?” and stomped (yes, stomped!) out of the car. 

Talk about mixed emotions! Joy because the lost was found.  Terror about what 20 hours of an angry cat locked in a car might mean.  Cautiously I stuck my head back in and sniffed.

 Nothing. 

I now love that cat.