Well, it's high summer.  And due to circumstances beyond our control (small matter of husband having open heart surgery last month, ahem)  it seems that the typical "Honey Do" list that many wives cheerfully hand to their husbands has fallen completely on my shoulders. 

 Yee haw.

I don't mind the mowing, really.  That, and weedwhacking.  Actually, I'm hell on wheels with the weedwhacker.  It's a terrific stress reliever.

So over the weekend I wore my typical lawn care attire, shorts and black tank, sunglasses and black weightlifting gloves.  

Hubby was pleased.  Brow quirked, I asked him the reason for his leer.  I was, after all, about to embark upon lawn care.

 Lara Croft, said he.  Really? said I.  

Oooh.  New fetish discovered.

Anyway, no time for that now.  I was off to mow.

It was during this time that I first noticed the mole.  That situation is ongoing.  (see previous post)

But I also noticed, while making those lawn loops, that our house seemed to be a bit dingy.  Dull.  Not white.  So, after I finished mowing it was back to the hardware store for me, this time for vinyl siding wash.

I changed clothes for this, into some white-on-white shirt and shorts, clothing impervious to the destructive powers of bleach.  Then I proceeded to spray the hell out of our house.  Dirt, watch out!


This was our house before.




This is our house now.  You can't look directly at it without sunglasses.  Cool, huh?

I also used the siding cleaner on our patio chairs.  They've completely disappeared.

Next I hosed off the patio.  Bleach does such a nice job.   I noticed one of the window wells was partially filled with dry leaves so I started to scoop.  But the dryer duct work, which vents into that well, had issues.  Time to replace.

Back to the hardware store.

Once back home, I figured I could fix matters before cleaning out the leaves completely .  So I removed the window from the inside, re-installed the vent cover, put the window back up, slid it into place. 

Buzzing?  Do I hear buzzing?  Hmmm.

I connected things to the dryer, test drove it, was pleased it all worked.  Then back outside.

I started to rake out the leaves and heard buzzing again.  It was not my imagination.  And then I saw the reason for the buzzing.




They attacked.  



I guess I'm lucky.  It could have been the killer bees.




I still had the hose attached to the vinyl siding wash so I gave 'em a spray and got the hell out of there.

I went back later, they were still buzzing around.



Luckily for me (but not for the bees) we had flash floods that night.  They either drowned or found a better place, but there was no buzzing the next day.

We think this was a small group, broken off from the main colony which is currently pestering our neighbors in the rock wall which divides our property.  Hee hee.


I'm tired of lawn care.  Tired of bleach.  Tired of moles and bees and dried leaves and the frickin' garden hose.

But none of this was as bad as the trash situation. 

But that's for another day.