Click on it already, geeze.Rosa 'Jackie Kennedy' and clematis 'Radar Love' fighting it out to a draw.
...OK fine. Truth be told the rose and the clematis are actually holding me hostage in the back yard UNABLE TO REACH MY COMPUTER. They are demanding money, guns and German scheisse porn.
....If you gank this image and set it as wallpaper on your desktop, they say they will release me unharmed.I'd do what they say. They seem desperate.
Ghostly, graceful papaver somniferum against a background of gooseneck loosestrife.If Ratly Stud Frobisher would be pleased to send me the 'recipe' he mentioned a couple of posts ago I would be happy to give it a try (and probably a lot happier afterwards. More than likely constipated too. Still, thats why the Baby Jesus invented bran cereal, right? Papaver somniferum: the dedicated gardeners' dirty little secret.)
More rose than shrub going on here. How do I do it? What's my secret?I say, why buy blood meal at $6 the bag when Jehovahs Witnesses are free...and deliver themselves right to your door?
Since the big tree out front came down I have half the green material I used to so now I cold compost. I finally finished my first turning of the year (no thanks to whoever used this as a garbage bin)...worked my way down to the bottom of last years heap by degrees as need and weather dictated. Now that its all piled against the side I'm ready to begin layering green and brown material at the far end again. But I'll have to be careful. Here's why-
Check out what I found at the bottom of last years heap...
...a BUMBLEBEE NEST!
See the two round holes? Those are the two main entrances to the bee nest. The shiny stuff all around it that looks like slug slime is actually dried bee spit; what the bee uses to reinforce the walls of its little home. The entire hive extends downward, beneath the old holey blue tarp there that I use as the turning floor of my compost heap.
Cool, huh?
Lets poke it with a stick!
SUDDENLY AN ANGRY, MADDENING BUZZING BEGINS AND MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS OF ENRAGED BEES AWAKEN FROM THEIR NIGHTMARE DREAMS OF WORLD DOMINATION AND STREAM FORTH, DRIPPING CAUSIC VENOM AND HUNGRY FOR HUMAN FLESH OH MY GOD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
...SUDDENLY A BAZILLION MILLION ANGST RIDDEN TEENAGE BEES HURTLE OUT FROM THEIR
Um....MILLIONS OF ENRAGED BEES SURGE FORTH LIKE A DEVASTATING TIDAL WAVE OF
ok wait.
Ok. Now.
...ONE!ONE VERY EXTREMELY PSYCHOTIC MURDEROUS PISSED-OFF PREMENSTRUAL BEE ERUPTS FROM THE BOWELS OF HELL WITH FIERY CAUSTIC VENOM DROOLING FROM ITS ASS-MOUNTED LANCE OF DEATH AND
...oh never mind.
___________________________________
UPDATE:
those pix were taken at 8:30 am this morning. nice day, suns out, blue sky...
yeah. look at it now, at 2:45 pm...
that, my friends, is humidity.not fog. not dust. HUMIDITY.
all together now: DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.
and you folks in the south? shut up. i hear you. you're all 'oo, you think you have it bad? the clothes rot in the closets here! oh, wah wah wah, we have 90% humidity all the time!'
fine; you win the pissing contest.
so lissen: once you finish playing your banjo and raping up Ned Beatty there would you please come get your mutated suckass weather already?
Bumblebees are rubbish at being aggressive, what you need is some African killer bees.
ReplyDeleteThose suckers would keep the JW's at bay no problem.
We have only one breed of aggressive apis humulis here; the one with a black bottom. This nest has orange-bottom bumbles. All this variety does is wander around taking bong hits and going 'whoooooah, dude..."
ReplyDeletethe africanized honeybee, apis mellifera, is slowly but surely crossing with americanized wild hives and italian agricultural hive breeds. hopefully by the time they get this far north (having sipped and mated their way through the mellifera-pollinated dope plantations of mexico, the southwest and oregon) they'll be mellowed out too. we could use the disease resistance of the Afs in our ag mellifera strains, so it might all work out for the best, too.
..garfy?
ReplyDeletegarfy?
someone wake up garfy, please.
TWO! There were definitely 2 bumbles in that last photo. Go look again. See?
ReplyDeleteI am slightly drunk, by the way.
Don't like the humidity? We had sooo much extra we thought we'd share. That's gratitude for ya.
ReplyDeleteI could send up some of the narly-arsed ginormous electrical storm we had today, complete with 50mph winds and hail. Would that be more to your liking?
Didn't you tell us in a previous posting that the bee is our friend?
ReplyDeleteOh and you don't know humidity. I am from back east, remember.
Didn't chaucer's itch used to be chaucer's bitch? Am I missing a b? Or am I just slightly drunk as well? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteNice bee(s)
cb: one bee and one shiny bee eyeball peering out of the top hole, actually. unless you're seeing 6 ft tall bumblebees walking down the street collecting signatures or something too. then i would definitely say lay off the cranberries.
ReplyDeletexul: does it really storm there every day at the same time in the summer? ever found a fulgurite? what did ned beatty do to piss you off? do you play your banjo in the rain? do you know don johnson?
mj: yes, the bumble is our lil buddy bee. and I'm from the Willammette valley, remember; i know all about dank shityass summer weather. SOMEONE MAKE IT GO AWAY.
joy: yes, she did. go visit here and say howdy! she explains it all in her sidebar.
I am real scared of Bee's and wasps
ReplyDeleteooooooh especially wasps .
So this post freaked me out, and I had to go hide in the wardrobe for three days. It ould only have been worse if there was a clown involved
Yes, some disease resistance (from cross-breeding) is probably your best, if not only, hope.Poor bees!
ReplyDelete*puts on clown costume and stomps about outside Beast's wardrobe*
ReplyDelete*repeatedly honks air horn*
Ha, the one and only time I was stung by anything was the time I plugged up the entrance to a wasps' nest (hornets? maybe?) in the ground. I was about 11 or 12 and decided to unplug it the next day while walking the dog. Because I felt badly for them. Not my smartest moment.
ReplyDeleteI sat in sister's garden yesterday marveling at the growth season here and the huge number of bumblebees. Lovely! I did not however poke anything with a stick. As for humidity...I find it in the shower. It is dry at home. DRY!
ReplyDeleteno.
ReplyDeleteThe African Killer Bees have reached the Pacific North West?!
ReplyDeleteThey'd die in that humidrippy..
and so would I!
That photo of the humdrumity is totally gross..I suppose that you don't even get Tornadic relief either? What about Squitoes..there must be trillions if not pickle dillions of 'em?
I have been constructioneering,
my gawdam Sunroom wall that was rotting..oh the joy of living in a climate that goes from 40 below to the 90s..that's in Fairenhike for ya :)
I've been putting in 12 hour days trying to finish before we get another thunderstorm that would rinse out my hoose!
Your flowers are BEE-You-tea-Full.
Stay outside but for heaven's sake woman, let buzzing Bees be.
Bees are a bit gayish and they like Abba.
ReplyDeleteScorpions, though. They're malicious fuckers. Big Sabbath fans.
oh please girl! you think you have humidity live in illinois...shit it gets so bad here you feel the fog of it when you walk out the damn door...we have that haze every day...i can barely see to drive to work in the morning it is so bad...and going out for a smoke in the afternoon is stifling...that is why my sisters moved to YOUR area to get away from it...shit you are a baby!
ReplyDeleteEverybody knows bumbles are harmless. At least since Yukon Cornelius took their teeth out.
ReplyDeleteAlso, they bounce.
Don't want your humidity, but you could send over some of your rain or river water, our lake is getting mightly low.
ReplyDeleteWhy the plastic under the pile? I thought soil contact would help with worms and stuff.
Pretty flowers.
To answer your questions:
ReplyDelete1)Pretty much.
2)Not yet. If I ever do I'll post pix. One time lightning struck a car I was in. Neither it nor its contents were melted. Fried the radio, though.
3)Just don't like the look of the guy.
4)Electric guitar, not banjo.
5)I've actually been to his house several times. Funny you should ask!