Bald face hornets

Hope everyone had a good 4th of July holiday. We celebrated at some friends house. Each year they have a big pool party with lots of good food and drinks. Played a little horseshoes and volleyball too.  We missed the big fireworks shows and since we did the kids talked me into doing something I normally wouldn’t do. We went to buy some for ourselves at a local place. Just so happened they were packing up the tent for the season.  The guy offered us a deal I couldn’t refuse. If we spent $100 he would throw in at least $300 worth free. Man did we get some fireworks. The neighborhood really got a show last night.

I realized that last week was the 1 year anniversary of starting this blog. I started off with good intentions in 2009 and logged daily entries for about a month. This lasted until dad’s health became an issue and it just wasn’t any kind of priority.  I then was down to 2 or 3 entries per week and now it seems I can only muster a weekly recap. I will have to make time for more entries again especially when there is so much to write about like this past week.

Running:
For the month of June I was only able to log 174 miles breaking my string of 200+ for 2010. I’ve run about the same number of days just cut down on the miles for each run. My weekday runs were mostly around 5 miles and my weekend longer runs were 10 or 11 it seems.  My weekly average is still right around 52 miles for the year which is good. My average pace per run dropped a bit in June with the lesser miles. For now it’s kind of like treading water until the time comes to get serious about training for my fall marathon.


For the weekly recap:
Monday 6/28 was an off day. I took the day completely off.
Tuesday was a lunch time run of 5 miles in 36:39.
Wednesday morning I brought my car into the body shop for some repair. I ran home the 11 miles from the shop in 1:27:11. This rounded out my month of June with 174 miles.
Thursday was another lunch time run of 5 miles in 38:13.
Friday the same 5 mile route in 39:20.
Saturday morning I ran 10 miles in 1:20:19
Sunday morning I did 10.5 miles in 1:26:54
WTD 47
MTD 30.5
YTD 1370
ODO 26536




Hunting:

As you can see from the picture of the tree house turned hunting blind it is in need of some serious repair. If I can’t figure out how to lift the stand to reattach the base boards to the tree I will likely have to dismantle it and rebuild.   That probably wouldn’t be a bad option anyway, but would be a lot more work. I managed to get my hunting application in at the deadline for the Waukesha County land conservancy. Sometime this week a drawing will be held to determine who gets to hunt this year.  It would be great to have another option for a place close by for the multiple gun seasons we have here.




Gardening:

I took some new pictures of the garden this morning. What a difference a month makes. Everything is coming up now and most things are doing quite well, although I’m having trouble with zucchini this year for some reason. Several of the plants appear to have broken off at ground level. The inside appears hollow like a borer had at them. I thought borer’s attacked when the plants were bigger though. The plants that are making it seem misshaped and/or stunted. I’ve never had trouble with zucchini before so I’m at a loss so far with this one. Everything else seems to be doing quite well at this time. I’ve learned that can change in a hurry though from weather, disease or bugs. Raspberries continue to come in strong. I’ve picked 6 to 8 quarts of berries each of the last several days. Froze some and made 2 large raspberry glace pies yesterday. There is nothing better. If you like fresh berry pies this recipe is good for strawberries and blueberries too. My big story in the garden this week came last Saturday. I had sheared about 10 of the large blue spruce in my yard without incident. I had one more tree to finish before I was going to quit for the day. I climbed up to about the 5th or 6th rung of my ladder with my pole trimmer when I realized I had a large hornet nest directly in front of my face. The first bee stung my arm and when I smacked it that must have signaled the others to attack. I had them all over me. I was stung an additional 6 times as I was jumping off the ladder and rolling on the ground. My ear and neck, forearm, and knee/shin really swelled up for a while. This is much better today, but still itches quite a bit. Those black and white hornets are some of the meanest bees I’ve ever come across. Bought some spray today to get rid of them tonight after sunset.