Visitors! Some welcome and some not

It is quite possible that we've had more visitors in our 4 months here than in 4 years in Las Vegas. We love it!! Today, some "welcome" friends from Santa Rosa drove 2 hours from Nashville to visit with us for the afternoon. We meandered around the downtown area and then drove part-way up Lookout Mountain to see a view of the city. (Note - the "mountain" is probably all of 2000' high. I know our Western friends will appreciate that.)

Then, these welcome friends of ours helped us get rid of some unwelcome guests.

If you saw the post about toppling the gazebo then you may recall that it was being chewed up by Carpenter Bees. When we toppled the gazebo we left the base for another day. Larry started to demolish it over the week-end and discovered the Carpenter Bees were nesting in the base.

On Monday he tried spraying the wood with insecticide but it didn't slow them one bit. He bought wasp spray which worked, but only when he could actually spray the bee. These guys are really big bees and they fly very fast. He managed to kill two with the wasp spray but there were several more where they came from.

Then, Ken had a great idea for getting rid of these unwelcome guests. Burn them out! That seems pretty smart because it would kill any larvae and stop the cycle. Little did Ken know that Larry doesn't wait when he hears a good idea. While we were sight seeing, Larry went to the fire station to ask about permits. They said we needed a permit for a control burn but not for a campfire or to cook food. So, we had a really big campfire! You should have seen the size of those marshmellows! ;-)

Boy, did those bees get a surprise! Amazingly, some stayed quite a while before buzzing out of there. There was one bee in particular who just did not want to leave the area. It hung around for the longest time. Eventually, as it got dark it finally disappear. Our friends disappeared about this time too, going back to Nashville for a week of conference. Larry and I watched the glowing embers for a little while longer and then came inside, bringing the wasp spray and gloves in with us. But, the story doesn't stop there.

When Larry set the gloves down by the door to the garage he heard a loud buzzing sound. OH NO!! That stubborn bee had decided to bed down in Larry's glove and now it was in the house! Larry quickly stomped the gloves and silenced the buzz. This is what he found.

It looks like a bumblebee right? The only visual difference between them is Bumblebees have fuzzy abdomens and Carpenter Bees have smooth ones. This tummy is smooth. Bumblebees don't eat houses, Carpenter Bees do.

Little did I know... (a.k.a. Monster Fig)

Little did I know when I looked at that little fig tree what was hidden from view. This 4' high tree that volunteered to come up behind the shed was reported to be tough. The seller of our house said it was unstoppable. My garden book said fig trees get to be 15 - 30 ft tall and wide. It had to go. I've dug other things out by the roots before so after cutting back the twigs growing off the stump I took my shovel and started digging.

I followed one root over to the gravel where I knew it had grown into some hay bales that had been left to decompose. That went pretty well. A couple roots headed under the shed. I cut them off under the building.

Then, I follow another root that headed toward the neighbor's yard. It got bigger and bigger the further from the stump I dug. Then it split into three. Oddly though, it didn't split as it went away from the stump but rather toward the stump. It's as if the stump came from some mother tree somewhere - which makes a lot of sense - except there's no mother tree to be found. Rather than dig into the neighbor's yard we took an electric saw to the 3" root and cut it off at the property line. By then, I was six feet or so from the stump and had created quite a hole.

There were still more roots to dig out so I proceeded to dig. That was 3 days ago. I'm still digging. In the photo below you see about half of what I've dug. The stump I have referred to is way in the background. You can't even see it really. It's about 3' this side of the gravel.

What I found from this point on is even more amazing. More often than not, as I followed a root like this along thinking it would get smaller and I'd come to the end, I would find just the opposite. The more common experience is that it gets larger and goes deeper and probably crosses under another larger root. I suspect the really large root in the photo below is from a different tree that was on the neighbor's lot but had been chopped down. That stump is about 3 feet across so I know it was one huge tree. If I can get the fig root out from under it, I'll just cover up again. It's about 3' deep.

I'm now 25' or more, and around the corner, from that stump. They criss-cross all throughout the garden area. Some roots run just inches below the surface, others are deeper. Most of the shallow ones go deep at once point or another. After taking these photos, I continued to dig. The smaller root you see in these two final photos took a steep downward turn. By then, the sun was going down and I was getting tired. I wonder what I'll find tomorrow; assuming I can dig tomorrow. Possible thunderstorms are in the forecast.

Little did I know...

Timber!

Today, Larry and I got ambitious today and tore down the gazebo. It was wobbly to begin with and was being chewed up by some sort of bee (in the summer time) that bores holes.

Larry first took a circular saw to the upright 2x4's to free the roof and then he started pushing. He pushed and pushed. It wasn't until he removed some side supports that it finally came down. My cool camera has a rapid shoot feature so I got some action. It's too bad you can't watch it in quick succession because it looks pretty cool.

Oops

There are those who will get quite a kick out of this... (Rene' for one).

I spent an hour or two on this egg, only to break it when trying to seal it a new way. Usually, I take them outside and spray them but it was raining. So I sprayed sealer into a small zip-lock bag and rolled the egg around in the bag. It was working quite well until I tried to transfer it to the drying rack. That little booger was slick as snot on a door-knob. I hardly knew what happened! Crack! Oops. Oh well. Back to the drawing board.