Problem Solved

Thanks to some help from some brave neighbors, the wasp nest situation was resolved sooner than I was expecting. And I don't think we'll have to worry about them coming back any time soon!

Step One: Douse with Raid

Step Two: Scorch nest with blow torch

Step Three: Use hose to put out stray flames from said blow torch

Total Destruction

Worst Morning Ever

Let me start by apologizing for my inconsistent (at best) posting this week. I really have no good excuse, other than the fact that this steady, scorching heat is getting to me and zapping all my motivation and energy (seriously. In July, we only had seven days with highs lower than ninety--and six days with highs in the triple digits. I'm pretty sick of it). Yesterday I broke a sweat just driving my car (with the AC on full blast) and couldn't bear the thought of going to the gym and actually getting hotter and sweatier working out. So I didn't. I came home and sat in my basement instead, organizing and reorganizing pictures and boxes for like the third time this summer.

But, last night we (finally!) got some legitimate rain, and the storm system brought some cooler temperatures with it (high today in the eighties!) so I was feeling rejuvinated. I was all ready to head out to do some work in (what is left of) our garden, but decided to first take a picture of our rain gauge, proudly holding almost a full half inch of rain for the first time since we installed it about a month ago (seriously--we've been that dry. Darrell didn't have to mow once the entire month of July). So, I reached out over the deck with my camera and, well, I'll let the picture explain the rest.

For the record, this picture was clearly not taken from on the deck where I was originally standing. As I leaned out over the deck railing to check the gauge and snap the picture, my eye caught the wasps' nest and I panicked. Like, called Darrell in tears about it panicked. Call me a girly-girly or whatever, but wasps terrify me. And as you might remember, this isn't our first run-in with wasps' nests on our property (see posts from last May and last August). And oh, did I mention that this nest is HUGE??!?!

Just looking at that picture triggers my gag reflex. But since I didn't want to miss documenting this monstrosity, I grabbed Darrell's camera and most powerful zoom lens, and went out in to the backyard (don't kid yourself into thinking I walked down the stairs of our deck--I went out through the garage and walked around to the backyard, taking a very large arc around our deck). And normally we catch the nests before they get this big; since we know we have a history with wasp issues, whenever we see a wasp flying around we do a survey of the whole perimeter of our house searching for a nest. But because of the heat we really haven't been outside (and the wasps probably haven't been very active) so we haven't noticed them. Until now.

I know that the smart thing to do would be to take our wasp-killing spray and go to town on that nest while it's cool and all the wasps are hanging out there and are fairly dormant, but I just can't bring myself to do it. There's just so many of them that I'm afraid one would get pissed before I actually get it sprayed and it would come after me, causing me to misfire and miss more of the nest, causing more angry wasps to come my way (worst case scenario? Probably. But that's the way I think). Plus, because of where the nest is, the only really good angle to get at the whole nest is by standing somewhat under it, and I know from experience that when those wasps do get hit they drop straight to the ground--as do those blobs of larvae. And I'm not about to deal with that. This is why I have a husband--taking care of insects and creepy-crawlies clearly falls in to his job description.

...And Then You Lose Some More

Seriously must have jinxed myself on Friday. I swear I didn't notice anything unusual about the zucchini plants on Friday when I was out in the garden, and then on Sunday when I was out there the plants looked like this:

Noticeable browning/yellowing along the stem near the soil line, lots of milky white spots along the stem, and some spots with buildup that is reminiscent of sawdust. And limp, droopy leaves (although that could be partially due to the heat). I'm at a loss; I suspect that in two or three days they'll look exactly like they did last year, with the stem essentially disintegrated at the base. We have one decent fruit left on one of the plants, otherwise the few others that are coming in are already starting to yellow. And one of the plants is totally barren at this point. We also haven't gotten anything larger than short pencil off our summer squash plants at all this summer. I immediately started some new seeds in our small pots and plan to transplant them if (and when) these plants die, but I have no idea what I should do differently with the new plants to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to them (provide they are even able to germinate and grow fruit this late in the season). My mom, who grew up on a farm and had a vegetable garden for years, doesn't know what it might be. My dad wondered if it was maybe something wrong with our soil, which might actually have some legitimacy to it, because our summer squash are planted where we had zucchini last year and the zucchini are in a new spot, which might explain why the zucchini started okay then turned bad and the summer squash never really did much.... But who knows.

I refuse to give up on growing zucchini, though--of all the things we plant it's the one we love the most, and nothing would make us happier than to have an over abundance of it in our house (as is we probably buy it from the store to eat twice a week and would gladly eat it more frequently). Any suggestions would be much appreciated!

Win!

Last spring, we painstakingly built a (pretty annoying) fence around our garden to keep out the rabbits we had in our yard--and subsequently didn't see another rabbit until October.  But this year, the fences are earning their keep.

Haha Mr. Sad Bunny. No garden goodies for you at this house!

Guess next time I practically trip myself going into or out of the garden I'll have to remind myself that without the fence there might not be much of garden to tend to!

From Bad to Worse

Well, apparently the death and destruction being wrought by pests in our garden wasn't done yet. Remember this picture from last week?

Well, here's the picture from today.



Totally bare in the middle of the plot, except for a few vines from our winter squash plant. We've officially lost all four summer squash/zucchini plants. Saddest day ever. 

And, as helpful as the Internet can be, we still aren't entirely sure of the problem. This is what the stems looked like prior to pulling them.

Here's a close up shot of the stem after we broke it off (which, believe me, wasn't a difficult task at all as broken down as these stems were).

So, I did some research, and the best explanation I could find for this was that it was frass, which is a common indicator of an infestation of squash vine borers. And sure enough, as I looked at the pictures, I remember thinking that I saw black and red bugs like that in the garden but just didn't know what they were. Squash vine borers lay their eggs at the base of the plant and the larvae burrow into the stem and grow there, which is basically what kills the plant (and what causes the frass). So, I grabbed my gloves and a box cutter and decided to dig a little deeper into the plant, hoping to find a larvae to confirm the presence of squash vine borers. And all I found was this.

Little black beetle-looking things. Which we also found in one of the other plants. But we never found any larvae, and bugs like this are not consistent with squash vine borers. So, back to the Internet I went. The only other common squash pest are squash bugs--which, coincidentally--look strikingly like stink bugs. And we definitely had one or the other in our garden this spring, because I happened to see one while Darrell was out there with me and he identified it as a stink bug. However, squash bugs lay their eggs on the leaves (which we never saw, but then again, we weren't looking there), and the have longer legs and antennas than the bugs we found in the stem (plus they never really have a black coloring). So who knows. We'll definitely try a few things differently next year, so here's to hoping that something actually works and we can enjoy a full summers worth of squash and zucchini. Fingers crossed!

In the Nick of Time...

I'll warn you now, the picture accompanying this post is a little gross. Actually, it's a lot gross. But this is what happens when you have wasps all over the frickin place.

Here's the background. Even though we killed three fairly decent sized wasps nests this spring, another one a month ago, and had one blow off the house in a storm, we kept seeing wasps fly around. So we went out to investigate again. We found one underneath our deck, but decided that as long as we were checking we'd be absolutely thorough. Up on the roof we went to check where our eaves overlap. And boy, was that ever a good decision. Not only did we find a handful of a nest, but it had six wasps on it. We also got two additional ones that were trying to fly back to the nest as we were sitting on the roof. But that's not the gross part. Apparently when you spray the wasps nest with Raid (which, for the record, we will never use anything else for wasp control), it not only kills the adult wasps that are perched on it, but also the larvae that are growing. And by kills them, I mean makes them fall out of the nest. You ready for this picture?

Isn't that disgusting?!? We counted just over twenty larvae that fell out of the nest--and some of those larvae have got to be close to maturity; they're about the same size as the dead adult wasps! Can you imagine if we hadn't gotten to that nest when we did?? It honestly makes my stomach churn just a little bit.

Seriously?!?!

Our house is apparently a haven for insects. We have spiders a plenty in the basement (part of the reason why cleaning it keeps getting put off), we have wasps a plenty outside (I think we're on nest six or seven for the summer), and we recently had ants a plenty in the house (you can bet that I sent Darrell out for some ant killer almost instantly). And as much as all of those suck, I suppose I can understand them a little bit; after all, they all tend to be common household pests. But this?!?!

I am soooo not okay with that being in my house. We have absolutely no idea where it came from, nor do we know what it is (Darrell thinks it's some sort of grasshopper--but it's frickin huge!!). It's just a good thing Darrell was home when I found it--I've started taking on some of our other household enemies, but no way was I going to take on this thing. I'm usually not much of a girly-girly, but when stuff like this shows up in my house, all bets are off.

Peanut Butter Banana Smoothie and a Possible Pest

So this is really more of a good idea than a recipe. And really, where can you go wrong with ingredients like this?

Protein? Good
Potassium? Good
Calcium? Good

Throw it all in the blender with a little honey for some sweetness if you desire...

And within in seconds you have this tasty drink by your side!

I really don't have more of a recipe than that; I secretly hate using measuring cups and spoons when I don't absolutely have to. I've made this twice in the past two days and it's been a little different each time, but with a combination of peanut butter, honey, and banana, it's hard to screw up. Unless, of course, you make it too runny (I strongly dislike runny smoothies). I always start with less milk than I think I'll need, because it's way easier to add more milk if necessary than take excess milk out.

And now, on a totally unrelated note, does anyone have a clue what this is?

It's got the fairly standard build and wing structure of a dragonfly, but I can't find any information about one with these particularly distinct colorings. It sounds like dragonflies are welcome garden visitors because they eat other pests--but I had seven show up literally overnight, and have never seen ones like this before, which concerns me slightly. Any help?

Enemies

Last week I spent a solid afternoon getting rid of some rampant enemies around our house. The weapons?

And the victims:

For the record, that picture doesn't even do justice to the number of thistles we have in our yard. It's ridiculous. And our yard is pretty big, so it took For. Ever. to spray them all (total first world problem, right?). There's an empty lot next to ours, though, so no matter what we do to our yard, weeds continue to grow and seed and blow right the heck into our yard. Our lawn has gotten significantly thicker over the past year, though, so it's able to defend itself from some of the intruders. Maybe by next year we'll actually be able to walk around our yard barefoot. Maybe.

A new enemy has been showing his ugly fact quite a bit the past few days, and so far the only effective weapon I have is a rolled up newspaper.

He's about as big as a quarter, black and all sorts of furry, and has like a million friends living around our house. Everytime I see one I point it out to Darrell, and all he says is "it's probably just a wolf spider". Like that's supposed to make me feel better--do you have any idea how big those things can get?!?!

For the most part I only see them outside (and believe me, they are everywhere outside), but this one got in the house. If Darrell worked closer to home I seriously would have called him to come home and take care of it. Furry spiders and I are not friends. But, in an effort to keep my husband from getting totally agravated with me, I killed it myself. And then bragged to him about it. He was not very impressed.

In other news, we've been so busy doing home improvement projects and killing stuff that our kitchen started to look like this:

It's okay if you gag a little. I felt that way every time I looked at it. Thankfully, once I actually had the time to tackle it, 75% of it went in the dishwasher (once I emptied the clean dishes out of it, of course). The rest are all good and washed....and still sitting in our dish drainer. One of these days I'm going to get a talking to from my husband about priorities... But until then, the blog lives on! :-)