Bees and books

The bees are back, unless they're still here. We suspect the latter. We only spotted them twice, but the second spotting involved three black bees who acted very much at home. {half-smile}

Moving to happier news, I recently finished A Thousand Words for Stranger. I liked it. That was an interesting complex of problems. Plus I liked seeing more than one alien who didn't seem like a copy of either an animal species or a human culture. {Smile} I'll have to start on the second book of the trilogy fairly soon. {Smile}

I also read Sarah Plain and Tall recently. A friend of the family was complaining about a lack of decent texts for her new class. When she said it was an English as a Second Language class, and they were "advanced beginners," I thought of Sarah immediately. It's easy reading, but it's really more interesting to adults than to children. {Smile} (No, there's nothing to make you blanch if a kid does find it. {GRIN}) Well, she said they loved it, and she clearly did, too. Then Dad decided to check it out, and he liked it. {SMILE} So of course I had to re-read it myself. {BIG SMILE}

I'll have to do proper reviews of those two books soon. Probably I'll put them up here later, as well as at the LiveJournal community Book Rec. {Smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

No bees? {cross fingers}

The bees might have left. {cross fingers hopefully} I don't quite know why,
tho we suspect they prefer quarters that don't smell of wasp poison.

A day or two after I wrote about the termites and bees, I did spot another
bee at our woodpile. But that might be the last one we've seen. Mom has been
watching the woodpile from the laundry room every time she does the laundry,
and she hasn't spotted on in over a week. {hopeful smile}

Mom thinks they might have moved to a neighbor's unused woodpile. That's
just enough further away, we're very relieved. If the bees have really left,
we can now burn all the termite-y wood without getting stung. {SMILE}

Our carpenter bees really are quite gentle, but if they're ever going to
sting, it's when someone is trying to burn up their home. Hopefully, we
won't have to worry about that now. {Smile, cross fingers}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Anne's Links

I'm trying the new, expanded links-list Blogger just called to my attention. It looks useful. Now I can spot at a glance what's been updated, without clicking thru everything. {SMILE}

I'll try it a bit before deleting the old, plain list, but I think I like this new list better. {BIG SMILE}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin

Woodpile residents

We have a problem in our woodpile. It has termites. So we need to get rid of the whole thing, and it's pretty big. Mom and Dad decided that they don't want to throw it across the street into the swamp; it's far too close to our house. They don't want to take it all to the dump, either. The dump is across town, and the woodpile would be several loads worth. With gas already over $4 a gallon here, they'd rather avoid that if possible. {half-smile} They don't want to heat up the house by burning it in the inside fireplace; not in the summer heat. So Dad has begun burning the kindling in the little outside fireplace where the barbeques dinner at times. {smile}

There was just one problem: whenever he did that, he heard angry buzzing from a carpenter bee behind by the woodpile. One seemed to be living in the woodpile, and she didn't like us disturbing her nice home. They're generally gentle bees, but we're disturbing her home... Dad decided to kill her before she attacked us for disturbing her home. Besides, the hole one makes in wood to make a home is an excellent starting place for termites. It's too late for this woodpile, but we don't want too many around. {wry smile}

So anyway, Dad decided to get rid of the carpenter bee before he got to that part of the woodpile. He went out two evenings ago, and sprayed the hole he found in the end of one log. When we checked yesterday, we found more bees - at least two females and a male - and at least nine other holes. Dad went out last night, and sprayed all the holes he saw, using almost all the wasp killer we have.

We checked today. Mom saw one bee, then she saw two bees, both kind of going around behind something, like their holes were back where Dad hadn't looked. I only saw one bee doing that, but she swerved in about a foot away from me, doing a convincing enough portrayal of an angry bee to convince me to go back inside the house. I didn't want her to start bumping me aggressively, let alone stinging! They're big!

Now Dad is thinking about what to do next. I hope he thinks of something soon! {odd smile}

Anne Elizabeth Baldwin