Wood Bees

So I get this early morning phone call on my day off. Mother Y2K is headed for the OR again and they plan to "roto-rooter" her arteries out. She evidently talked to my step father around 11:00pm and informed him they were about to wheel her into the surgical room at any moment. Thus, by the time I heard about it, it should have all been over.

Only it wasn't.

"Really? You think they want to start operating on her around Midnight? She wasn't critical, she wasn't an emergency. This seems wrong. Are you sure she knows what's going on?"

Turns out she didn't know. She was heavily sedated and on loads of pain meds and was hearing all of her fears as reality. My sister, who had gone up there to stay with her, and protect her from sedated nonsense was off sleeping in her car. No problem, we cleared it all up rather quickly and were back on track. But it was still early, and I had a day of "no reporting to work" ahead of me.

I grabbed the hedge clippers I had been avoiding all summer and trimmed up the Holly and then the rose hedges. I trimmed up a couple of trees and then I put away the sheers before my yard started looking like my dog when I give HIM a haircut.

The rest of the day was a bust. I tried several projects, they all failed. It got hot so I grabbed some meat out of the freezer and slow cooked some roast for dinner. About a half hour before serving I fired up the grill and placed the cooked roast on a grill sheet and got an excellent texture. The girls in my house were mightly pleased with my heroic cooking effort. And YES that is how I like to think of it, HEROIC.

Shut up!

So while I am out there on the front deck I saw our wood bees have returned. These bees are not a threat to people, but they will do damage to wooden structures... like my front deck. The roof was already riddled with large bored holes from these winged beasts. Nothing seems to keep them away and I could stress over it until I was sick... OR I could take the redneck approach to home protection.

No I did not start blasting away with a shotgun! Sheeesh! Give me a little credit. It's bow and arrow season on them critters.

KIDDING!! I have a plastic "Little Tykes" baseball bat that is very wide, very short and very flat on one side. It's kind of like a wiffle ball version of cricket... only with wood bees. It's jolly fun! The secrete is to never take your eyes off of everything and try not to wipe out the dragonflies... they are cool.... Wood bees are not. And I have to admit, there is a great deal of satisfaction in hearing the endocrine shell of a hovering wood bee crunch.

On lessons learned. Don't play wiffle ball wood bee when Mrs. Y2K is visiting with you on the front deck. You tend to hit towards her all the time and she aint a good sport about it.