Still Weathering This Summer of Our Discontent

At right:  the dusty bee wasp graveyard that is my woodstove.

Still out here folks, only occasionally breaking my news/blog fast long enough to realize that the world is still in the handbasket.  If anything, it has picked up speed.

After each foray into paying attention to the larger world, or even statewide Alaskan news, I've been convinced that it is not yet time to once again wax bitchy about things. In my defense, I offer the following linked stories that drove me straight back into willful ignorance:

• Bristol's new job: Bad Actress 
• Palin to refund most of defense fund money 
• Tea Party Express fuels Miller-Murkowski fight 
• Advances in Oil Spill Cleanup Lag Since Valdez 

Nope, not yet time. In the meanwhile, it's been all about the house and yard, Goldstream Valley fixer uppers both.   This being Squarebanks, we can get away with keeping the yard large au natural, occasionally making a mad sweep of things with the weed whacker.  It's been a successful endeavor so far -- I found a missing dog dish and a few tools that had been lost in the knee high vegetation.  I'm telling you, if we could just find a way to explore the possibilities of bird vetch as a biofuel, we could cut heating costs dramatically around here.  An invasive species, this stuff freaking thrives if left unchecked, covering everything in a mat of ... vetch.  I've long since abandoned any illusions of victory in The War on Vetch, it was already well established on my little acre when I bought the property, but I've accepted the idea of a permanent stalemate.

The bees wasps, however, are another matter.  It's been another high bee wasp year at our house, the annoyance punctuated by my discovery that they are probably nesting in the pipe of the woodstove.  Earlier in the week, while finishing up some interior painting (trim, and what a pain in the butt that is), I noticed this extremely loud buzzing sound.  Loud, as in, amplified bees wasps coming to you straight out of a large empty room.  Which they were - that loud empty space being the stove pipe.  I finally figured that out when I kneeled down and peered at the glass of the door of the stove and saw them bumping up against it.  I was too chicken to open it for a few hours and figured I'd find a one or two.  Instead, there was a veritable mass grave, hundreds of them all covered in ash at the bottom of the box.