A Buggy Day

What a beautiful day it was today.  Not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was a perfect 80 degrees with a slight breeze.  We got to the farm knowing we didn't have much to do.  We probably wouldn't have even made the trip today, except I read that if you leave the bug bags up too long, the dead bugs in the bottom start to rot and stink and chase away any new bugs drawn in by the lure.  Jeff gave me a choice before I looked at the bags.  Did I want to change the bags or whack weeds around 120 trees?  I opted for the bug bags.......is it too late to change my mind?????  They weren't lying about the smell!!!!!!  OMG!  The aroma was that of rotten meat!  The bags were full to capacity with roiling, live bugs on top!

This was one of the most disgusting things I've done for a long while!  As I'm loosening this moving mass of bugs from the hangers, I'm being buzzed by incoming beetles.  Brings whole new meaning to Beetlemania!!!!  They were landing on my shirt and buzzing in my hair as I was trying to get the smelly bag of boiling bugs into a big, black garbage bag.  Ugh!  One down and three to go!  At the second location, after getting the bag off the hanger, I had images of the bugs in the garbage bag, escaping their prison in a massive cloud in my face.  I opened the bag cautiously, and, thank God, they were still in the little bag inside the big bag!!!!  I was now a bug bagging expert and proceeded to put new bags on the remaining two traps. Then I dragged about 2 pounds of dead and dying Japanese Beetles back to the truck.  I left them on the ground in the sun to bake them dead before we took them home to put them in the garbage.

While Jeff finished trimming around the trees, I checked in on the new pumpkins.  There's one that's basketball size and getting orange!!!!!  Another one is a little smaller and elongated.  They hold promise of being pretty big before the first frost!!!!

We had five Bluebird houses up this year and all were occupied.  We had Bluebirds in one, wrens in two and Sparrows and Swallows in the other two.  One Wren's nest had an abandoned egg in it.

 

While I was cleaning out the bird houses, a Bald Faced Hornet landed on the side of one and was munching the cedar wood off the side of the house.  I didn't think to get my camera out until he was gone.  Here's a couple of paths he chewed in the wood!!!!  Fascinating to watch, but I kept my distance.  They are a very big, heavy bodied, aggressive hornet and can sting repeatedly.  Not something I wanted to experience!!!!

We relaxed a bit down by the creek before packing up to head home.  That's when I discovered that my decision to leave the bag of bugs in the sun was a bad one!!!!!  I thought they smelled bad EARLIER!!!!  The stench was sooooooooo bad, we left them in a garbage can at a gas station!!!!
All in all, it was an easy day compared to the past few weekends.  We are taking the week of September 21 as a "vacation" and plan to camp there for a couple days and build the shed.  I will "shed" light on that week after it unfolds!!!  Have a great week!