Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Critters Planning for Fall

The weather has surprised us all this week. It was supposed to rain for a week. I was totally bummed, thinking the sunflowers would turn brown and yucky. But they have changed the forecast and now we are in for a beautiful fall weather week. I love autumn. Could be that it is my birthday season but mostly it is about the glorious weather and the colors. The arrival of the shorter days and knowing soon that there will be a fire going and I will be knitting or doing something creative in the evenings is also appealing in its very own way that only a knitter or stitcher can really understand.

All the animals and creatures are getting ready for winter in their own way. The flies are in the house and driving me batty. It happens this time of year - one of the less wonderful aspects of "living in the country" with livestock just outside the door. My laptop is warm and they love it. Yuck. I don't know how many times I have witnessed flies procreating just to the side of my computer screen. I have fly strips hung all over the kitchen trying to rid the place of the pests before my next knitting guests arrive on Saturday morning. These strips used to totally freak me out when I was a small kid. Now I appreciate the efficiency at how they lure the buzzing flies in and they die. Did you ever walk into a fresh fly strip? That is one of their hazards, I must say. 



The wasps are buzzily building more nests. I'm not sure what it is about this house, but the wasps love it. When we took some walls down when we first moved here, they were full of wasp carcasses - seriously - 3 feet of dead wasps. Gross. We had to wait until it was cold to take the sheetrock down because we didn't want to get stung. I'll never forget the trash bags full of dead and hibernating wasps. (Just one of the adventures of renovating an old house.) One of those wasp relatives was on my kitchen ceiling just above the sink while I was busily fixing dinner last night. I thought about squelching him and then decided to let him live. About five minutes later, he zoomed down and stung me at the crook of my elbow, at that really tender spot. Super ouch. I didn't know what hit me. Then I remembered the wasp, who was no longer there. Hope he was happy.

I'm sure I will have more fall critter stories to tell as fall mozies on in. But for now, check out this.... very cute sunflower needle-felting sunflower idea here on the Living Crafts blog via Craft Gossip.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where we live, it's spider season. Big spiders, at least an inch in diameter.They spin their webs in an evening, and then you're trapped, can't go up the porch steps or walk in the garden without stepping into a sticky web. That's how I know it's fall here in northern Ca.

sewa elf jakarta said...

Nice article, thanks for sharing.

Elaine said...

All I see around here in Chicago are squirrels busily rebuilding their nests after an extremely rainy season. One even brought an old bagel from who knows where and left it in one of my Wooly Pockets flower pots on the back porch. We've never experienced excessive flies or wasps here.

Dianne@sheepdreams said...

I feel your pain! We have a standing joke here at our farm about the wasps trying to reclaim their ancestral homeplace. When we tore off the old front porch, we discovered that just behind the ceiling boards were hundreds of pounds of wasp's nests, with dead and live wasps by the thousands! I agree with you....gross! It's a constant battle to keep them from building nests everywhere.

Kristin Is Now Writing Over on Substack

Hi All! A quick note to let you all know that I'm now writing a Newsletter over on Substack: Kristin Nicholas' Colorful Newsletter f...