DollsArtCats

----------------------- I patched my driveway today with the trowel-on crack filler. I emptied out one bucket, I think I need two more. Luckily it looks like rain off and on for the next two days, so my calf muscles might recover before the second round of troweling. I tell myself it is good exercise.  I also scraped paint on the lower set of rails so I can repaint them, and there are curious yellowjackets around to sniff the paint, which makes me nervous. I am not a fan. Bees yes, yellowjackets no. These guys are all over my backyard and I love them :D

I went out this morning to put the day's coffee filter into the compost, and noticed that the morning glory, which has been feeding bees for weeks, had finally closed up shop--and there was this poor bumblebee staggering around, trying to get into the closed blooms. I felt bad for it--it's the end of the season for them, too, but there should be another week of sunny weather before it gets too cold at night for the bumblebees. So I went inside and got a small bowl, about a tablespoon of honey (which I don't really use for anything but shortbread at Christmas), and some orange Pellegrino, which is basically water, sugar and orange juice, and mixed it together. I figured the bees probably wouldn't eat out of a bowl, so I carefully dipped the mix onto the edges of the zinnias and some of the nasturtium leaves. It was a bit lumpy so I set the bowl down on the edge of the deck, figuring the chipmunk would clean up the extras. For about a half hour no one came by, but at 4...

Backyard denizens on Tuesday. Right now it's raining hard enough to make Noah check his building schedule; which makes a fridge delivery a bit problematical, but we will see. The new pipe weld in the basement is leaking, but I have learned that if you drape a rag over it, a pinhole squirty leak can be channeled to run down into a bucket instead of spraying the room. J knows a lot of stuff.

The water hyacinths are blooming in the pond. The frogs are wandering around the yard, looking for bugs; I think they ate all the minnows, but at least the water hyacinths are doing great. J took apart the filter again this morning and evicted a bunch of water snails, which get inside the motor and gum things up. I'm thinking some nylon net around the filter might help that problem. And we have bees on all the flowers: We also went to Home Depot and bought a pickaxe for enlarging the moat around the shed (it still floods when it rains hard), and we tried to buy some light bulbs--the bulbs weren't in the computer, and in disgust the clerk just gave us the bulbs; so we got a couple of small Chinese bulbs as a Gift With Purchase with the pickaxe. By the way, if you need house paint and you aren't in love with a particular color, check out the paint returns--sometimes people find they don't like a custom mixed color, and there will be a few odd gallons of paint languishi...