Smoke in the air
photos tell the story…
Posts from the ‘Montana’ category
Oh deer!
I KNOW better!
Mea culpa to my step-Dad, Bill!
Bill gave me Egyptian Onions, Pimento plant, Pepper Plant – from seed starts that I think he starts in the dead of winter. I babied them from CO, putting them in the shower before I rolled each morning and on the dash to have a bit of sun when I parked each night…
I spritzed and talked and loved these plants up all the way home… and then in Montana they had a spot in the sunroom for 4 days – a bit of natural light but not too much as they were in transition – and probably shock!
After 4 days I started putting them on the front porch – just a little bit at first and gradually more until they were on the front porch all of the time.
Next step – transfer to pretty new pots.. nice roomy pots from my favorite nursery and they just looked beautiful – I’m SOOOOO sorry that I did not get a photo of them looking beautiful in their new pots…
Because – today – Aug 1 – I left Karl and Bob in the house and was gone about 3 hours to gather groceries and other house stuff, plus pick up the motorhome and while I was gone – the @#$&%$!!!! DEER had a small feast…
BUT, I am not giving up – I was especially looking forward to making pimento cheese – SO, all the pots are now in the garden which has a deer-proof fence – where they should have been to begin with – I can NOT believe I was so STUPID!
Ok, well, in the midst of deer distruction, fires-smoke, heat – several pieces of GOOD news. Sam, my folks cat, is doing VERY well, my motorhome’s hydraulics are fixed and it is home and stocked/loaded in case we need it for a fire escape, AND temps are cooler and kind of pleasant baring the smoke/fire stuff. We are counting our blessings!
To close – Bob, the cat – a “legend in his own mind”…photos especially for ORS friend 2oldman:
Smoke gets in your eyes
For friends and family seeing the Montana Fires on the news….while it is shaping up to be a very nasty fire year, there are no fires near enough to me to be of concern. There is a lot of smoke – particulary afternoons – yesterday was the worst as lots of plumes went up late afternoon with normal thermal conditions and then a bit of breeze blew the smoke into the valley. This will probably continue and the high temps make it hard for them to get a handle on the fires. There is some rain forecast later in the week – although with thunder/lightning.
There are structures and homes threatened in a number of locations which is unfortunate. In the years I’ve been here and seen 3 other bad fire years, the fire teams have kept structure damage to a minimum – boy, tough and dangerous job!
The sun is rising a hazy red – we will not be seeing blue sky today.
Taking back the Front Porch
By popular demand…the outfit….
Day 2 was much less stressful – it was cooler by 10 degrees and my anxiety level was less due to the success of day 1 – there were no visible wasps – a second dose of the foamy spray, knocked down the remaining 2 nests and done. I did do another walk around and found one mini-nest – stragglers from yesterday rebuilding??? Not sure but I will have to keep a watch.
Last night I went out with a glass of ginger ale spiked with maraschino cherries – all quiet… spritzed some fresh hair spray – still quiet. We’ll see – hard to believe there aren’t some colonies in one of the wood piles but maybe reducing the population on the house will do the trick.
At the moment, the front porch is ours!
Mad as a hornet!
– at Yellow Jackets – I think they are Yellow Jackets… they are some kind of wasp anyway and they are yellow and black and attracted to sweet stuff as in my glass of wine, tea, my hair (spray or shampoo??). I am pretty good at not swatting at bee type things and letting them figure out that I am not a flower (food) and they then go away. But these guys – actually I guess it is the girls that go out for food – not giving up! First sting on the back of my arm just walking and I assume she got caught between arm and the edge of my blouse – oww! but then not too bad until next day when swollen, hard, hot and red to nearly my elbow! So looked around and found a nest – a ha! – next morning I sprayed it well and knocked it down. Mission accomplished I thought…
But then, standing in the yard – stung twice more on the leg! Oh – maybe the first nest I saw was not the only nest so did a really good look around and found 7 more!
Most are small like the first, but 2 fairly large (photo left) and naturally in the peak of the roof.. requiring the extension ladder. It is not a seriously high peak on my little cabin-house but still I don’t want to fall and it has required some serious psyching up – dealing with the anxiety of possibly missing a few of them and having to remember to take my time on the ladder. I so BADLY want them gone!
And it is not just me – before tackling the 7 nests, I needed more spray. I stopped at the home and ranch supply place – none… the cashier said they had a run on it. Funny, I thought – I’ll stop at the hardware – none – same story… I go to a grocery and then thinking I’m being sneaky to a nursery and 2 convenience stores – None. And there are other people looking also – we are kind of following each other around chasing after Wasp Killer spray.
Apparently it is the summer of the wasps and no one can enjoy their decks or porches and lots of stinging. Yesterday, I even received an email from the fire department warning about them and reminding everyone where the Epi-pens were located in the medical kits – Yikes! – not quite Hitchcock but…
The hardware told me that a truck would be delivering about 1:00 yesterday – I phoned at 1:05 and was told that 95 cans were being unloaded. I wasted no time – hopped in the Jeep and went – grabbed up 4 cans and came home where they made me so anxious sitting on the counter that I had to hide them in a closet.
This morning, I donned my “outfit” – jeans tucked into boots, long sleeve denim shirt buttoned to the chin and wrists, raingear over with the hood cinched tight – ski goggles, gloves – no, I am not getting out the tripod to get a photo! I was nearly poached by the time I got to the ladder armed with 2 cans of spray which I had tested briefly. A little anti-climatic – it went well. I saturated the nests and didn’t fall off the ladder. I knocked down all but the 2 nests in the peak – those I will give another dose of spray tomorrow morning before I knock them down.
I’m sitting here dripping wet – it was 65 when I went out but still too warm for the amount of stuff I had on and it was closed down so tight nothing got in – not even air.
Now – whether getting rid of these nests will allow me back on the front porch – that I don’t know … Killer frost, that’s what we need! And believe me, I am not the only one saying that – the grumbling, whining and general misery with the heat wave is getting to everyone – I feel better not being the only grump! From inside the house until further notice…
Midwest girl to city girl to wood nymph
I was born and grew up in Northwest Ohio – Toledo and then Perrysburg. At 24, I took a job that moved me to San Francisco area and then several years later I moved to Los Angeles where I lived for 13 years before my move to Montana in early ’94.
Karl will do a bit of a perimeter check on his own first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, but he is a homebody dog – staying in the “yard” unless I walk out and then he happily goes with. We are in the habit of a walk down the driveway as soon as there is a bit of light for me. Karl will venture into the woods on the way back, but the trip out is along the driveway. I have a cup of coffee with me and I amble along as he stops to sniff and explore a bit.
A few days ago I was standing where I took the photos above, absently watching Karl sniff around and looking at the moss covered stump. When I lived in Los Angeles there was always a neighborhood bagel place that I could walk to from my apartment. Standing in the early morning – something about the stump and the trees – it brought a vivid picture to mind of the contrast between the surroundings of my current home and how I once lived in the city. In California and particularly Los Angeles, I lived in apartments that were mostly next to other apartment buildings and I had maybe one window that looked at a bit of a tree. I was fortunate to find smaller buildings where I was one of 2 apartments on the floor so had windows on 3 sides usually, but still – it was Los Angeles – the city… sidewalks, cars, buses, small yards immaculately landscaped, office buildings…
In Montana, even my first house on a 90 x 100 lot in a subdivision – was a treed lot and there were 2 lots next to me with no homes as well as a woods behind that was a buffer between my subdivision and the one next – a huge leap from L.A. The next move took me to a transitional rental on Flathead Lake – on the lake with my own little beach and also woods and orchard around and between the house and the road. Swan River Road was next – a little craftsman house on 6 acres with about 2/3 in yard/pasture and 1/3 in woods – the river across the road and Swan Range rising to the east. The house was surrounded with old growth birch and pines
Now, here I am in the 8 acre woods and cabin – turned into small ranch house – 175 yards off the road, on top of the first foothill before the Swan range, 40 acres of meadow beyond my woods opening onto vistas of the mountains, 40 acres of state land on the north boundary, and a nice neighbor who enjoys quiet and privacy as I do – to my west. The woods is newly thinned and healthy with grasses and wildflowers growing up in between the trees. The sun shines through the trees in a beautifully filtered pattern which changes from first light to last.
It is difficult to explain the thoughts and feelings that flitted through my mind in a manner of seconds – the contrast between the city and this woods. I have lived in the lush midwest, near enough to the ocean to walk to the beach, in a neighborhood, on a lake and now in the woods by the mountains. It is the woods by the mountains that I love best. I bought a poster when I was 16 – it was about 2 feet wide and 4 feet high – it was simply sun shining through the trees of a woods – I could nearly duplicate the poster with any photo of my woods…. from the front porch, Saturday, July 21, 2007.