Buzz buzz buzz
Alas, I have unwanted guests squatters in my garden shed.
Behold my wasps nest. Only a tiny little thing right now, but actively buzzing and breeding. Eep!
And so this means that in addition to picking up various plants for the pots at the garden centre tomorrow, I'm going to be looking out for wasp extermination stuff as well. My understanding is that you puff it onto the entrance, and then all the returning worker wasps walk it in with them to kill the nest. I am still wibbling about whether to buy the stuff and try to do it myself, or ring up the council and pay them £40 to do it for me.
It's either that or I leave it to its own devices until they all die off this winter. But my shed is a precarious and rickety affair. A football sized nest or bigger could be enough to bring the roof down, and I'd rather like to be able to get to the garden tools in the course of the summer.
Today's other endeavours have been more profitable. The quilt for the bed has been washed ready to be put away for the summer, and it and the sheets are now drying (probably dry, actually) on the line. I have scraped cement droppings from the upstairs building work off the waste pipe above the back door and stopped the drip from a loose end cap. I have dredged the pond and treated the water so that it doesn't look like green scum any more. And I have done a rather half-hearted weeding of the paving slabs.
That's enough for one day, so I've also put out the cushions on the garden seat, put up the umbrella, and opened up all the doors at the rear of the house so that I can enjoy my sunny weekend. One of life's little ironies: the guy at work who's just flown out to spend a weekend in the Mediterranean was most disgusted to look up the weather report yesterday and find out that it was predicted to be ten degrees colder there than here.
Mind you, after all the rain we've had the past few months I'd say we're more than entitled to a little sun. I understand that there is no danger whatsoever of a hosepipe ban this summer, no matter how hot it gets. :-)
Behold my wasps nest. Only a tiny little thing right now, but actively buzzing and breeding. Eep!
And so this means that in addition to picking up various plants for the pots at the garden centre tomorrow, I'm going to be looking out for wasp extermination stuff as well. My understanding is that you puff it onto the entrance, and then all the returning worker wasps walk it in with them to kill the nest. I am still wibbling about whether to buy the stuff and try to do it myself, or ring up the council and pay them £40 to do it for me.
It's either that or I leave it to its own devices until they all die off this winter. But my shed is a precarious and rickety affair. A football sized nest or bigger could be enough to bring the roof down, and I'd rather like to be able to get to the garden tools in the course of the summer.
Today's other endeavours have been more profitable. The quilt for the bed has been washed ready to be put away for the summer, and it and the sheets are now drying (probably dry, actually) on the line. I have scraped cement droppings from the upstairs building work off the waste pipe above the back door and stopped the drip from a loose end cap. I have dredged the pond and treated the water so that it doesn't look like green scum any more. And I have done a rather half-hearted weeding of the paving slabs.
That's enough for one day, so I've also put out the cushions on the garden seat, put up the umbrella, and opened up all the doors at the rear of the house so that I can enjoy my sunny weekend. One of life's little ironies: the guy at work who's just flown out to spend a weekend in the Mediterranean was most disgusted to look up the weather report yesterday and find out that it was predicted to be ten degrees colder there than here.
Mind you, after all the rain we've had the past few months I'd say we're more than entitled to a little sun. I understand that there is no danger whatsoever of a hosepipe ban this summer, no matter how hot it gets. :-)