Weekend and To-Do

[elfs]

I cannot believe how much we've done this weekend.

LisaKit came over Saturday and helped Omaha and I weed out the worst part of the back yard, where the rhubarb plant and the cherry tree are growing. I mowed the entire back lawn, and then we rented a truck from Home Depot, raced home, loaded 700 pounds of downed fence and the wreck of the old metal playset, and dropped it all off at the local dump.

Woof. In 90°F heat, too.

Sunday, Omaha and I did our monthly shopping, then got home where I proceeded to re-butcher the packed sausage and salmon into 1-pound increments, and put away everything while Omaha attended a meeting. Then we went out back, and again in the high-80's heat dug two three-foot deep holes, lifted out two 60-pound cement footings for the downed fence, and propped up a pair of eight-foot fenceposts with a gravel drainage base and 30 pounds of concrete. We used double-wide cereal boxes to hold the initial pour of concrete. I must not be very reactive to lye because I got the stuff all over my hands and yet never felt a thing.

We have wasps in the house's frame, and they're eating my house. You can hear them in the downstairs bathroom and it's very, very creepy. They got in through a crack where the water line comes out to an outdoor spigot, and apparently they're moving up along the plumbing. I've got the phone number of a local pest control guy, and I'm going to contact him tomorrow. Wasps I can live with-- we do, here in Washington, every year. Wasps eating my house? Those are gonna die.

Dinner last night was utterly delightful-- Grilled hamburgers, mine mixed with feta, Kouryou-chan's with American "cheese", and Omaha and LisaKit collaborated on a zucchini bisque using a zucchini from the garden that was almost as big as some of my sex toys. That and tomatoes made dinner all good.

Tonight, we ate just as good: real baked potato, broccoli steamed with olive and garlic oils, and filet mignon wrapped in bacon. The meat was astonishingly cheap, but heck, they were barely 6oz each, and there were only three of us.

I have some stock cooking on the stove. I need to chill it and get it into the 'fridge, and process it before Wednesday. I need to buy lateral 2x4s and 1x6's for the fence. And I need to call pest control.

Comments

[kengr]

There's no lye in concrete. Some calcium oxide or the like which is somewhat basic, but nowhere near lye.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

it's not lye, it's Lime. Calcium carbonate. Caustic, yes, but not nearly so as lye, which is sodium hydroxide. Not something you want on your hands for too long, though.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

wreck of the old metal playset

Scans to "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". Hmmm.....

[(Anonymous)]

What do the wasps sound like? We had a nest in a wall void over our computer room, and it sounded like crinkling tissue paper all day while the sun was shining. In fact, that's how we discovered them. The exterminator said they had chewed most of the way through the drywall of our ceiling by the time he got there. :-O Man, I still have nightmares about that.

Number 127

[elfs.livejournal.com]

It sounds like chewing. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

According to the exterminator I spoke with this morning, this is happening all over the Puget Sound this year. "They're digger wasps, and they don't know what a house is. They find a dark place they like, and they find drywall, and they think it's dirt and they start chewing." I asked why they don't go after the exterior. "It's painted and treated. It's weird to them. Drywall, though, is just a kind of dirt." He's coming by this afternoon with a bee suit and a poison dust he's going to inject into the nest.

[urox.livejournal.com]

We had a wasp infestation in one of the apartments that we lived in. I kept telling the managers over and over how I kept hearing the chewing and cries of the baby wasps (they make a very distinct sound) and they didn't believe me until they'd chewed a hole through the wall. This was the second story of a two story apartment complex.

I would suggest against injection. They are likely to "retreat" further into the house. The first guys tried that with mine and failed. The only solution that worked was to drill a hole *further* into the house and spray poison that way so they decide to abandon and exit the nest.

Zucchinis

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, you keep watering them, zucchinis will just keep growing. Unfortunately, I've always found the extra-large zucchinis not to be as tasty -- like the flavor gets diluted. But if you can get good big ones, good for you. -Malthus