Can you say “In-fes-ta-tion”? WE GOT ONE!

  First of all….

 

…we are certainly in a bit of a heat wave here…This is the temp on our deck outside our kitchen…Just after I took this photo the degrees jumped up to 106..Suffice to say, the dress code here at the Cave Dwellings is “the less , the better, without getting arrested”….

Did I mention that we have NO A/C?? I believe I have also said that we really don’t mind it…most of the time.  Actually, even today, we have a breeze from the South..Unfortunately, today it feels like it’s coming from a blast furnace…

These poor birds are really in need of water, and I have done a “cease and desist” on screaming, stomping and banging on the screens to chase them off.  I am becoming a more gentle soul, allowing the birds ..ALL the birds, even the nasty Blackbirds , to use my birthday fountain as a Roman Bath/sometimes toilet.

I ask you..How could I deny them this temptation in 106 degrees and a drought?

 

We have  had a few “confrontations”….and even the Wasps are “hanging out” drinking from the water running down the outside..As they say, “all creatures, great and small”…Yep, I’m feeling a new attitude about “sharing” my birthday gift…

I am NOT getting a very good feeling about our pests that have invaded the roses here…Remember our neighbor’s beautiful rose garden we could enjoy from our deck???

Above, Left is before the infestation…..         Right is how it looks now…and here is why..

…Japanese (Asian) Beetles….not sure which is the correct term..ALIEN BEETLES!!

If you really want to be grossed out, click the pics to enlarge..I double darn dare ya!

I kid you not..All of Deb’s rose bushes and every rose was covered with these…The air was thick with them…They were on my 4 spindly rose bushes, and I sprayed them and then cut all the buds (and what remained of the roses) off….Deb did the same, but compared to my 4 measly bushes, she has at least 50….Now… go back up to the 2 photos of her garden from our deck…What a difference…

We are spraying with Seven, and the beetles are a little diminished, ( now that we have taken their main meal away), but they are VERY hard to kill…When I was taking these pictures they were dive bombing me!  YUCKO!!…and I felt like my skin was creepy crawling just watching them devour her beautiful roses…As I said…INFESTATION!!!! OK, that’s enough insect photos…I am feeling the urge to hurl…

Den and I are considering taking out a lien on the house to help defray the cost of our water bill…that we have yet to see…One can only imagine….I have to run the hose in the driveway for 5 minutes just to cool it off for watering plants (wasting that precious H2O)..If I began watering the poor flowers right away, I would cook them.  We are hoping for a little rain tonight….(key word is HOPE!)

Our oldest daughter, Terrie, is undergoing a purge of her current house décor’(Could it be the fact that she will turn 40 this year?)…She has taken all of her stuff off the walls, tables, counters, and has them ready to sell or give away…She is feeling the need to change up her wall colors and “knick knacks:.  It looks like they are moving…I will post some after pics if and when she finishes this MAJOR project..

I’m hoping to tap into her taste for re-purposing and re-modeling when, and IF, I ever get McGyver to realize that our 1970’s kitchen is no longer the newest and neatest room in our house…It is now possibly the oldest and the scariest!!..

Well…Golly darn, it’s clouding up a bit…Maybe..just MAYBE, we could catch a few raindrops here in Sandwich…before we end up as TOAST instead!!

I’m stuck in the movie, “The Birds”..or worse.. “Harvey”..

If any of you are old enough you might remember these 2 movies.  The first was a horror movie about , you guessed it, BIRDS!!..The other movie, Harvey, starred James Stewart (not one of his best movie attempts), and it was about a giant “white rabbit”…(OK, some of you flower children may be having a flashback to the singing group Jefferson Airplane and their song about drugs named “White Rabbit”….  but snap out of it!!.. It was the 60’s, after all!!!).  At any rate, I am feeling like we are slowly becoming a reality show here, starring Dennis and myself being possessed by the wild creatures…

Sooooo…I am not crabbing about the heat…I am now crabbing about the drought..and our lack of vegetables still able to fight the good fight against the long, lop earred, fuzzy, hopping critters living rent free on our property.  I did quit hauling water to my lettuce in the veggie garden..The rabbits are keeping it trimmed down to about 1”…So much for fresh summer salads,eh?..I had been watering my radishes faithfully.  They had nice big green tops showing and looked ready for picking.  I pulled a few out of the ground and realized that unless I had a recipe for radish TOPS, there were no radishes in my future, either.  They looked like an itsy bitsy red root…Our pepper plants would be doing nicely..I had watered them well…but now Brer Rabbit has devoured most of the leaves, so it is doubtful we will be stuffing any this year…HMMMM..a recipe for stuffed rabbit, perhaps???

 

 

….or maybe a nice tenderloin of squirrel?? If I truly AM the Wicked Witch of West Center Street, I should be able to turn him into “potted squirrel”, right?..Now, if I could just find my magic wand..I must look for it later.  All I need now is a basket for my bike, then just kidnap a little dog, and I could double for Elphaba (W. W. of the West)…

 

It is becoming “Critter Wars” here at the Cave Dwellings…The Blackbirds have invaded my new fountain and take their baths there daily, throwing water at least 3 feet around the fountain. This is bad enough, and makes it necessary to wear a swimsuit on our deck… but to make it worse, those rotten big ‘ol nasty birds are throwing BLEACH water…Yes, I have had to add a little bleach to the water with the 95+ heat wave…As it turns out, my flowers surrounding “said fountain” are not fond of bleach water..they turn black..and I have had to move them about a gazillion feet away from the “dirty bird bathers”..Don’t get me wrong…I love the little cute birds..They exhibit some “fountain manners”, dipping their little toes in, fluffing a little, getting a drink and flying away…but those Blackbirds might end up in a pie!

Our weather has cooled off slightly, so this AM I took the bike I mentioned above, and rode out past the Sandwich Fairgrounds..I had it in mind to ride through the grounds , but forgot that they are having a big Engine Show this weekend…

 

I have yet to figure the allure of looking at old engines…This must be a testosterone related disorder…

So, instead of zipping pedaling through there, I opted for riding my bike to Edgebrook .  This is our local golf course/country club with lots of homes built around and in it…

  If you are NOT a golfer,…I feel your pain at being bored to death here…My adventures on a golf course are memories of the elephant trunk waterfall at Goofy Golf…

I’m sure the country club police were watching my every move as I pedaled my arse down the golf cart roads like a crazed Tiger Woods stalker…

To further irritate you non-golfers, I will provide a link for Edgebrook Golf Club…I know, I know…but I have a certain public I must provide for…Actually, Dennis and I did go to a golf tournament once, courtesy of our good friend who lives near Dallas..We attended the Colonial, while in Texas one spring.  All I remember were the very well dressed Southern ladies (compared to moi), and whispering while we were following some guy named Fuzzy Zeller around…How could I EVER forget that name?

Well, it’s date night tonight.  I washed the GMC this morning, thinking I could trick the Rain Gods into watching us drive it out of the garage tonight..all clean and sparkling so they could drop buckets of rain on it…As it stands right now, they didn’t take the bait..and I have to add more water to my fountain so the evil blackbirds can throw it all out…

HEAT WAVE..I Feel Like “Lawrence Of Suburbia”!

  YOWZERS!! Holy ceiling fans, Batman!!….We are in a nasty heat wave here in Illinois!  As I have said before, we don’t have A/C at the Cave Dwellings…and this “Cave” is not as cool as a cave should be!  McGyver and I might have to go live with Bruce Wayne…I just KNOW his cave has A/C..not to mention no train horns all night long!!  Today I hauled water out to our veggie garden, (our hose won’t reach), then I gave all of our flowers a much needed drink, (hose reaches those).  I must have watered China, because an hour later the dirt was dry as a bone again..Geez..it had to go SOMEWHERE, right??

Front to back of left photo in our veggie garden,  are Yukon Gold Potato plants, lettuce (what there is left of it…thanx bunnies), pepper plants with cans on them to keep them safe from rabbits, and tomato plants in the chicken wire.. As you can see by the out of focus photo on the right, the rabbits lie back and wait until the pepper plants grow beyond the top of the can…then they sit down to dinner…Most of the leaves on this poor thing are history…GRRRRRR!!!

Deb and John, our neighbors on the East ,have a beautiful rose garden that we get to see from our deck..what a fabulous view we have.

 

They also have gazillions of roses in their backyard…and a huge garden of Lavender..

That cherub statue, right, had broken, but Deb’s hubby used bondo and fixed him…

This same neighbor raises Persian cats…She has 4 adults ..and about 8 weeks ago they had 3 kittens, (not Deb and John, duh)…Deb brought them over to show us ..and she let me hold the gray one…

  I know…it’s hard to judge who is the funniest looking…The cat with the smashed in face and striking eyes….or the crazy old lady in her jammies clutching said cat…

 

 

I MAKE NO EXCUSES FOR MYSELF..I HAVE PROOF LATER THAT I CAN CLEAN UP ONCE A WEEK…BUT YA GOTTA READ TO THE BOTTOM..HA HA!!

 

 

 

 

 

Kelly and Cindy stopped the other evening with 2 of their grandkids…Kaitlyn, in the rose top on the left, and on the right, Kaitliyn is holding her cousin, Sophia..I tried to get a picture of Sophia in her sundress, but she would only show us the back of the dress..she wasn’t liking me taking her photo….

I think she really liked the 3 bows in the back of it…Ahhhhhh, those were the days, right girls?? We could actually get away with ruffles on our butt. We could wear almost backless sundresses with bows…and still sport diapers and ruffled rubber panties discretely hidden underneath…Somehow , I don’t think “Depends” will be that easily covered..

Good news for Dale Earnhardt Jr. fans on Sunday….He WON ONE!!!..McGyver was virtually kissing the TV and I was doing my happy dance…WAY TO GO, LITTLE “E”!!!!  Boy, it’s been a long dry spell for that team!! Oh…yes..I am redneck woman…I LOVE NASCAR!!  But…I occasionally try to act and dress like a lady,  a 64 year old lady who refuses to go quietly into that good night…OK, we aren’t going to make this next picture very big…I look best when viewed from a distance..or in the dark…

“If you have a full set of matching salad bowls, and they all say Kool Whip on the side, you might be a redneck woman”..

“If you think loading the dishwasher means getting your wife drunk , you might be a redneck”…~ Jeff Foxworthy

Short and Sweet to All Fathers Out There..

Wishing all Dads, Step Dads, Adoptive Dads, Surrogate Dads…ALL DADS..a very wonderful day…

LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU EVERY DAY, DAD…BUT NEVER FORGET YOU!!

 

NOW, ALL YOU DADS!!, GET OUT THAT APRON.…AND LET THE GRILLING COMMENCE!!

Do I detect a little “Civil Unrest” in town??

 

 

This little gem of a sign is one of many that are popping up aaaaall over town.  We have had the same mayor for quite a few years, and many of us think it is time we “change it up” a bit…get some new blood at the helm..New Captain for the ship…Elections aren’t until next Spring…and I have a pretty good idea who will run against the sitting Mayor..and I will vote for the new recruit.

 

 

Our little town is suffering the same bunch of home foreclosures as every big town…Remember the “Center Street Clay” I photographed in my 2010 tour of Sandwich??

It was a business that that made and sold pottery here and online…Well, that dream was burst by foreclosure, and they moved out so this mansion went on the auction block..It sold for $167,000, I’m told…I just hate that sooo many people are losing their homes to bank foreclosures..Some people just bit off more than they could safely chew, and some were told by unscrupulous realtors that they could afford a home when they couldn’t..For whatever reason, it certainly changes the “ambiance” of a small town when homes are being gobbled up by speculators and rented out to, well….shall we say “less than eager” occupants…It’s happening here…A LOT!!!

Sandwich has several subdivisions…One is called Potter’s, way South of town…One is called Webb subdivision, on the South edge of town. One is called Dutch Acres, on the East edge and another is called Sandhurst, on the Northern fringe of Sandwich…The most recent subdivision is Fairwinds, and it is just North of us, backing up to the Sandwich Fairgrounds..It has quite a few homes built now, and McGyver and I walk through it on occasion…WELL…today there was a new sign posted…

The developer is apparently in a very bad financial situation..Notice that 76 lots will be sold in one lump bundle for a suggested opening bid of $250,000…That doesn’t seem like much for 76 buildable lots with sewer, elec and water, when you divide it up…Oh dear…I hate to see this happen..

Our weather here is turning very hot and the grass is beginning to dry up..The birds have discovered my fountain/bird bath…I really hate to holler at them for bathing, but I do NOT like it when they turn it into a bird potty..Somehow, the berry smooshed scat and black and white splotches take away from the calming affect of the water…GRRRRRR!!

 

We put out our flags for Flag Day…Notice the lovely crop of clover we are unintentionally growing in our front yard…Maybe I should harvest it and sell it for a new kind of salad greens…I know some “tree huggers” who wouldn’t know the difference if I called it “Baby Revolc” and sold it is some new salad addition…(revolc…clover…revolc..clover..get it?…OK, so that was pretty lame..)

 

 

 

Not too much going on here except Den and I doing some tag team watering…trying to keep the gazillion dollars worth of potted plants alive, and fighting a never ending battle with the squirrels (who insist on digging my plants out), and the rabbits (who have them for side dishes daily)…

Mr. Wren is considering buying one of our very lovely wren houses..He was sitting on top, singing his mating song,  hoping for a bride so they could pick out china and silverware…The painted birdhouse is one our granddaughter, Taylor, made me in Industrial Arts class…Girls take that class now…I obviously didn’t.  I cannot drive a nail straight to save my sorry buttinski..

I SURE MISS OUR “NO DRAMA” LIFE ON THE ROAD…(CHECK OUT THE WHITE SOX AND BLACK CROCS…AND THIS WAS IN THE A.M.!!)

It’s time to gear up for “date night”, tomorrow…This means I actually have to put on a bra and an outfit that matches (somewhat), drag out the “war paint” and smelly good stuff…I really need to get a photo of me “cleaned UP”..I am not very comfy in confining clothing, but make a tolerable date for McGyver to escort to town on a Saturday night..So, that’s it for my blabbering aimlessly..Thanks for reading this far….You can back away from the computer and just shake your head..I totally understand.

“In the offices of a New Jersey loan company: Ask about our plans for owning your home.”