Playing by ear

It was so warm Friday and Saturday that it woke up the wasps that live in my walls. The wasps need a very specific temperature to wake up. It can’t be too cold , i.e winter or too warm, i.e summer. It must be spring and it must be a very short window of time in spring. Normally, it lasts about five days. One day I wake up, throw open the curtains and am greeted by nine or ten newby wasps.

Its not my favorite day.

It took me a while to figure out how to best kill my borders. They were going to have to die, I’ve had bad experiences with room mates and I took a Never Again oath. I tried spraying household cleaners at them, but it didn’t work and the drippings and lose spray wreaked havoc on my hardwoods, I tried smacking them with rolled up magazines - and while this was effective, it left me with lots of dead wasp bodies and ruined magazines. I tried leaving the dead around as object lessons to the other wasps, but wasps have very small, very primitive brains and they aren’t into the Godfather movies. They don’t get the reference. So.

They had to go and they needed to go body and buggy soul. I had an idea.

My friend the vacuum cleaner. The wasps don’t seem hugely interested in getting away, they don’t seem to be afraid of the noise and once in the vacuum cleaner, they don’t come out. It means that my vacuum cleaner has to sit in the middle of my living room for a while, but it’s worth it. I had put the vacuum away, but now it’s back. The wasps have gotten a little smarter. I’ve found them wrapped in the curtain and climbing on my silk flowers. I’m not happy about this. They are supposed to stay on the windows themselves, it makes it easier for me to kill them. All this outward bound business is annoying. I can still kill them just as efficiently, but now I’ve had to haul out a dinning room chair to the middle of my living room along with the vacuum.

It got colder today, I hope it stays that way. Saturday was lovely, bright, sunny, warm, perfect wasp hatching weather. It was also a great day for raking the yard. So I raked. The yard looked really nice until it started to rain during the night. I came out Sunday morning and all the leaves were back. Bastards.

I almost raked the leaves again, but I came to my senses. It was also raining. I decided that I could listen to my FauxPod while not raking the yard in the rain. Alphagal and Brosky loaded a bunch ( okay, a very small bunch, the FauxPod has a very small brain) of songs onto my machine and I decided to be all 21st century while I did my indoor chores.

It was cold and rainy and my new plan was that Dogger and I would watch a Harry Potter and spend the day curled up on the chair not working, or doing the indoor chores. I liked that plan, but, I remembered that every time I drive past Dix I comment to myself how pretty it is and how I really need to take my camera before the leaves all fall.

So, Dogger and I didn’t sack out on the chair and watch our movie, and after a while it wasn't all that cold and rainy and we still got to watch interesting things and we got more exercise than watching a movie and I got to listen to my FauxPod.