Family Archives

October 17, 2014

Birthday Season 92-364/365ths

Wife Lila arranged for Mother’s Almost Birthday to start off with a delivery of a bouquet of of cupcakes from Class of ’66 classmate Marilyn Maevers Miller. Miz Miller is an artist in the kitchen. (If you are interested in any of her handiwork, drop me an email.)

“That’s not for eating”

Marilyn also dropped off a huge pot of mums from her garden in Charleston. She saw me eying them hungrily, and quickly let me know they were real, “not for eating.”

Only amateurs have birthDAYS

When you’re pushing 93, you’ve had time to figure out how to stretch your birthday into a Birthday Season. Brother Mark and I got her a new TV for her bedroom a couple of weeks ago (that was a selfish move on my part: the old one weighed as much as a Volkswagen and didn’t play nicely with the antenna I had installed in her attic). Mark and Wife Robin are driving down for the weekend Friday, and Wife Lila is due from Florida next week.

Some packages from the Western Branch of the Steinhoff arrived marked “Do Not Open Until Your Birthday.” Curator Jessica will be here around Halloween, and I am hoping that she’ll fill the holes in her suitcase with some of HER fine baked goods to carry on the celebration.

As soon as she sees the taillights of my van pulling out of the driveway, she’s thinking about flying out to Tulsa for Thanksgiving. We’re hinting strongly that Florida would be a good place to spend Christmas.

So, light a candle on October 17, and let Mother know you blew it out in her honor.

Past Birthday Seasons

October 9, 2014October 10, 2014

Yellow Jacket Wars

Here’s the tale of our yellow jacket woes as told in email and Facebook posts to friends and family over the last couple of days.

Oct. 7, 2014, at 2:45 p.m. – Mother got nailed twice while pulling vines off the back of the house. I went into the same general area to load up some firewood and got stung once on the arm. The culprits were yellow jackets. You might think they are bees, but they have skinny waists and they can sting more than once. I think they are in some sandbags we have old kindling in.

I sprayed the area with some magic bug killer, but that just got them stirred up.

Last night, I went out after dark with a flashlight after everybody must have gone to sleep and started pulling the area apart with a hoe. When I felt something hit my beard, I beat a hasty retreat indoors and saw one on my shirt winding up to nail me. I brushed him off and watched him buzz around the room while I searched for a can of bug spray.

I dug one out of my car and went back to battle. I finally spotted the guy and gave him a good blast, but didn’t see him fall. After waiting a few minutes, I figured he had passed on to his just reward.

This guy will NOT give up

About two hours later, I saw something whiz by my ear and start flying around the desk lamp. I waited until he got to a clear spot and I really let him have it this time. I don’t know whether he was poisoned or drowned, but he stopped moving.

We’ll give the nest another crack tonight.

[Note: it’s not easy to shoot yellow jackets buzzing around. The best I can do is point the camera in their general direction and fire away when I see one go by. The autofocus isn’t picking up on something as small as an insect, so the few I DID capture were fuzzy. On top of that, I’m paranoid every time I see something moving in my peripheral vision, I flinch and start swiveling my head around. You wouldn’t believe how many tiny bugs and mosquitoes there are in the air. And dust specks. You can click on the photos to make them larger, but nothing is going to improve this one.]

Oct. 7, 2014, at 3:06 p.m. – Helpful hint from a Facebook friend: Wait till after midnight and add kerosene to the hole. Use a full gallon and then let soak for 60 minutes, then add another gallon and light. Bees be gone.

Oct 7, 2014, at 3:12 p.m. – My yellow jackets are against the house. I don’t think Mother would like it if I burned down her house to get rid of theirs.

Oct 7, 2014, at 3:32 p.m. – Another helpful hint from Facebook: Ken, use a lighter, the long one, like you used on a grill

Oct 7, 2014, at 3:34 p.m. – Lighting it isn’t a problem. Putting it out might be.

I found the nest

Oct 7, 2014, at 7:39 p.m. – I found the nest. I waited until after dark until there was no activity (well, there was one guy, but I gave him a blast of bug spray and he spiraled down to the ground. I tried not to gloat.).

I pulled two sandbags of kindling out into the yard with no results, but when I yanked a third one out, I exposed the hive and they were none too happy. I made a dash back to the house and got the door closed just as a couple of them were smashing against the glass.

I’ll wait until just before I go to bed and wash the hive down with spray if there aren’t any buzzing around.

How does Wyatt Earp do it?

Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 9:44 p.m. – After watching the second half of Tombstone, a cowboy shoot-em-up movie, with Mother, I went downstairs the check the yellow jackets. I must have carried one inside with me, because he was buzzing around the desk lamp.

Unfortunately, in my hasty retreat earlier, I left the flying insect spray outside. By the time I stuck my head outside to grab it, he was hiding.

I went outside and saw I had split the hive into two pieces and both were covered with bugs. I sprayed them both down until I ran out of kill juice and made a beeline back inside.

I’m sitting at the computer watching for movement out of my peripheral vision and hoping I remember how Wyatt Earp did that quick-draw thing.

Oct 7, 2014, at 9:46 p.m. – I stuck my head outside again. I think I may have won the skirmish. Nothing was in the air (although a cricket by the door frame took a year off my life).

The sizable hive had bunches of dead critters on it and none flying combat air patrol over it.

The guy in the basement must still be here somewhere. My head is still swiveling around and the bug spray is locked and loaded if he shows up. I’m full dressed in a long-sleeve shirt, jeans, socks and a cap. I was wearing gloves up until a few minutes ago.

After I took the gloves off, a mosquito bit me on the back of my hand.

Layers like pancakes

Oct. 8, 2014, at 10:04 a.m. – I got my first good look at the hive this morning. It’s pretty good size. It was built between the dirt and a sandbag. The spray killed a substantial number of the critters, but there are enough buzzing around in the air that I’m going to leave it alone until after dark.

I thought the hive was in two pieces, but the bulk of it is stuck to the bottom of a sandbag. I don’t see any movement ON the hive, but there are a dozen or so yellow jackets orbiting the area. I’ll let them settle down until after dark.

Oct. 8, 2014, at 9:05 p.m. – Went out with rake and pulled sandbags out into the yard. When I got a closer look at the hive, it appeared to be made up of multiple pancake-sized nests. I pulled apart some of the “pancakes” and thought I saw movement, so I blasted it and the area where I saw the activity this afternoon. Maybe it’ll all be over by morning.

What’s with Cape and stinging insects? I got nailed by a bee when I tried to shoot the destruction of Franklin School in 2012.

September 8, 2014

Growing Things Fear Him

When I travel across the country, my van is loaded with cameras, tripods, computers, electronic gizmos and navigational aides. When Brother David hits the road, he carries such implements of destruction that trees and bushes shrink back in horror as he goes by.

Mother passed on certain traits to each of us. I got her desire to explore new roads and to marvel at the power of storms. David, on the other hand, inherited her desire to attack green, growing things and shorten them to within an inch of their lives (or more).

The sun had scarcely started to think about waking up roosters when he brought out a hedge trimmer that could chop down walnut trees and a blower so powerful that he has to put rocks in his pockets to keep from being blown backward. The only thing that makes more noise than the blower is his snoring in the middle of the night. He was sleeping on the porch (“cause it’s nice and cool”) with the door closed and I was in the basement trying to finish a blog post when I started having problems with my monitors vibrating. I traced the disturbance to my brother creating low-frequency, but powerful sounds.

Like a space shuttle launch

I covered a space shuttle launch one time where I set up a recorder to capture the roar of the thing blasting off. After the last speck of it disappeared into the blue, I played the recording back and found out that the launch caused the earth to shake and created a massive sound wave that washed over you like the surf, but I didn’t capture it. My theory was that the sound was too low a frequency for my recorder to pick up.

If I don’t get the sonic sound track tonight, I’m going to assume he hits those same frequencies. Maybe I can get video of the dining room windows vibrating.

Why don’t we just use a chainsaw?

I watched him tackle a bush in the front yard that was almost as high as the house. He used the massive hedge trimmer to bite out huge hunks of it, then he would walk around snipping a leaf here, a branch there, must like a barber might do to a head of hair. Every trip around the bush would cause it to get smaller and smaller. (I can only imagine how short the coffee table would become if he thought one leg was a little off and he needed to even it up.)

Finally, I said, “Dave, why don’t we make the process shorter? I’ll get the chainsaw and we can just take it off level with the ground.”

“It’ll grow back fast,” was his response.

Does she REALLY like those flowers?

After we finished Mother’s splendid dinner of liver and onions, mashed potatoes, with gravy, corn and some pink stuff with cherries in it, I felt a nap was in order, but he decided the grass needed mowing. Now, I’ve offered to do that before, but Mother always says she likes to mow, so don’t touch her mower. She must have seen the crazed look in David’s eyes, so she didn’t even try to stop HIM.

It took him a little while to figure out that you have to hold down the brake to start the beast. I think he was confused because he didn’t seem to understand the concept of a brake. He operated at two speeds: Fast and You’d Better Get Out of My Way.

Here he is contemplating if Mother really LIKES those flowers. “They’ll grow back,” I could hear him thinking.

Dust and a spray of walnuts

I watched him running at full tilt boogie right up until the time he made a turn and sprayed me with sticks, rocks, boulders and a rat-a-tat-tat of walnuts propelled faster than the speed of sound. I know it was that fast because they hit me before I heard ’em coming. I got the hint.

I calculate that he’s gonna be slowing down a little this week: he’s turning 60 on September 12.

August 31, 2014

The Buzz about Hornets

Mother has a fascia board that needs to be replaced on the back of the house. Mark and I decided we have neither the ladder, the expertise or the ambition to tackle something that would turn into a Big Job if we tackled it, so I reached out for a fellow recommended by Ernie Chiles.

He said he’d get it done it before we the attic filled with squirrels. Before he took the job, he wanted to walk around to see he needed to take care of anything else at the same time. When he got to the window outside Mother’s bedroom, he suggested that she keep the window closed because of the big hornet nest about three feet from it.

I watched the nest for a good bit waiting to capture one coming or going, but didn’t see any. It might be an inactive nest, or they might have been waiting for me to give it a poke, at which time they would demonstrate why wise people don’t poke a hornet nest.

I haven’t had much experience with hornets – bees and wasps, yes – hornets, no. I want to keep it that way.