everything is undersized. gee, what a surprise. i mean, it's not like we're in a drought or anything. it only takes like a nanosecond for the cukes to get bitter iffn u miss the necessary irrigation on them. the interesting thing is that, after a long hiatus not growing them, the watermelons proliferate like weeds. jalapenos are, as expected, sharper and hotter than usual. green peppers fine, lopes only ok, the 'giant' beefstakes now turning, and will only finish baseball size. big yield, small size, with many firsters getting tossed due to bottom rot, which unlike normal, is actually grey and not black.
there was no animal movement for the past month, but like magic, they all got the memo and started up in the past week. did you notice? twitter, i guess.
set a new personal all-time record the other day, seven stings.
got a lot of guff yesterday, sitting around with a bunch of pals.
'wait, whut? u got 7 stings?' (three at left ankle, one at left calf, two on right forearm, one on right shoulder). 'aren't you always telling us that the stings are most likely when it's triple H? (hazy, hot, humid. ifn ur cranky outdoors, so are they.), have you noticed the weather lately?'
of the 1/2 dozen or so folks there, sitting around solving the world's problems, four had their 'sting' stories of the past week. my favorite was the guy who just put his forearm on the open window of his truck, where it goes into the door, felt something, whipped his arm up, and discovered a mad hornet lodged on it. normal temps, that sucker just flies away after getting bumped. i at least had an excuse. cutting the grass with the big scag walkbehind, the blades caught on a root, the machine started to 360, and in my effort to regain control, it spun to where i don't cut, and hit some kind of ground nest. you ever notice that tragedy always happens in slow motion?
'ouch. what's that?' looks down, see's some kind of stinging bastid hanging off my ankle, and it kicks in - uh,oh. before the 'run away!' reaches my brain, it's over. pow, pow pow, pow, stingfest on my limbs.
it only took aboot 20 yards of skidaddling, arms waving around my head, the whole scene, to get away, which is quite less distance than normal. like everybuddy else in the hot sun, they lost interest in doing anything for long. lucky me.
(i once shotgun blasted a big paper wasp nest, aboot 30 feet up on a tree limb, and i was at least 50 feet away. but it was cooler temps, and those suckers wouldn't give up the chase until i was in Rhode Island.)
pro tip: if you have any trees, shrubs, heck, anything, with a long evening exposure to a full sun, check for stinging bastid nests.
they ain't dumb, and would like their home to be warm in October, and they're popping up everywhere so situated now. on the udder hand, haven't seen much of those seemingly 3 inch long whitefaced hornet nests in the ground. yet. i saw one of those monsters a few years back, dragging a hummingbird along the ground. honey, im home! guess what's for dinner!
