lady BUGS

1000 of them in a tiny straw-filled sack. "They are quite voracious," says Catherine at Plant World. "Have you ever seen a lady bug pupa?" I was embarrassed to admit I had not. Then I saw a drawing of one - Hey! I've seen those in that tree already! One of my neighbours must be importing straw bags of lady bugs, too!
Meanwhile, jerky neighbour has taken my husband aside to complain. He's still spraying his whole garden, inspite of the city ban on pesticides. "oh, yeah, Nature, " he said to me dismissively years ago, when I asked him to tell me when he was spraying so I could close my asthmatic son's bedroom windows. He's never bothered to tell me ahead of time, and still gets his old spray can out every spring. He's convinced, and told my husband so, that my composter is the source of all these aphids and wasps, and if I could just get rid of the composter, and spray everything like he does, the world would be to rights.
Mostly, it just makes me want to buy a plot of land where I don't have a neighbour 10 ft from my patio. Plantation style, I think.
Ladybugs are going out tonight for the first time. We'll see what they can do. And the arborist is coming next week to prune the tree, so we should have a cleaned up yard soon.

buzzing branches

The weeping willow is filled with wasps. Big nasty ones. It literally hums from a distance, and the fuzzy buggers fall on you as you walk under it. They seem to be fighting with one another, and fall out of the tree struggling with one another like that ridiculous scene in Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise and his nemesis both leap off their flying motorcycles to engage in a mid-air fist fight.
Well, it isn't funny. The tree is infested with Giant Bark Aphids, which seem to have migrated from the street behind our garage, and the wasps are attracted to them. I've called an arborist about removing about half the tree, and most of the horizontal branches that are in the worst shape. He's going to install some wasp traps, too, which he says are only filled with water - non-toxic.

kelowna on fire

We were out of town at a friend's place, and the news was suddenly filled with Kelowna, BC. Forest fires have set a huge portion on fire. I picked up a newspaper today - the whole mountain was on fire. I felt awful for those people running for their lives - they said 11,000 were already evacutated. But I also thought of Rose trying to rent an apartment there. She had called on Thursday before we left and said they were planning on renting one the next day, then leave for Vancouver until it came available at the first of the month. After that I haven't heard anything. I hope she sealed the deal. Housing will certainly now be more expensive and harder to find.

apartment hunting

Rose called last night and the three of us had a long conversation, mostly about her apartment hunting in B.C. Of course, it brought back some memories for me, and I'm sure for her dad, too. Sounds like a nice relaxed B.C. kind of place, and I was wishing on the phone that we were just leaving everything here in the icy east to start something new. It doesn't sound like she'll be headed back this way in the fall. Sounds like she likes it there. She said it hardly goes below zero there in the winter "like California" she said.

Born on St. Jean Baptiste, Died on Bastille Day

I wasn't well this morning, and so didn't go to work. Was so cold in bed last night - just shivering - but too tired or sleepy to get up and get the comforter at the foot of the bed. Woke up dizzy - cold head all night is always bad, but who thought it would be so cool in July??
Couldn't shake the vertigo this morning so decided to go for a walk down to the park. It's a stunningly beautiful day here, but a bit windy. I walked and walked, and I walked all the way down to the lake. I headed down to the footbridge and looked back up at the loops of highway - the Lakeshore divides off the Expressway there and there's a sharp bend in the road as it follows the lake. I thought suddenly of an incident many, many years ago when my mom was driving me into the city and coming around that bend suddenly a dead dog was lying in middle of the expressway. It was a very large animal, maybe a Great Dane, and pretty torn up by the cars that had not been able to avoid it. I think I must have gasped as we drove by its carcass, and moved away and covered my eyes. On the passenger side, it was so close to me - I'm leaning to the left now as I type this, leaning away from that memory.
My mother tried to comfort me. "Death's not pretty," she said. I thought of all the dead things she's seen in her life, growing up on a farm with hunters and trappers around, the slaughtering of animals, or the deliberate killing of pests. Deer hunting and old regal stories of grandmothers who 'got their buck' in unusual ways. But for me, growing up was a suburban affair, with barely a baby bird scattered about, or a flyswatter close at hand. She knew this, and was peering at me out of the corner of one eye. Studying me.
Mom died July 14th and walking my way out of vertigo today, down by that spot in road, I remembered that morning. She asked me not to tell you, Loose Chicken, and it was the hardest thing to do.
At her memorial I handed out cards to visitors that had her birthday and date of death (it's hardly 'passing' as the current euphemism goes - she died). A friend came and read it over. "Your mother was born on St. Jean Baptiste Day, " she said, "and she died on Bastille Day." In and out of the world with a bang, in some places of the world. Mom would have liked that, I think. She would have liked it very much.
It's gorgeous out today, Mom. Thanks for visiting!! I love you.

Phone rang once

The phone only rang once, for some reason, and then went directly to message, so when I ran over to pick it up, I could hear Rose leaving the message 'in real time'. It's always an odd effect, to listen to someone who can't hear you, but you can hear them as they talk to the machine. Well, she was calling from a breakfast place in Brandon, Manitoba and planned to head out that day for Swift Current, Saskatchewan. The dog, she related, was having a fabulous time - getting walks four times a day and eating lots of yummy scraps from restaurants. Ah, life on the road. If only it could stay so halcyon, and never grow old.

Little dog gone

Last night, my husband and I arrived home to find the little girl and the little dog both gone. She had said before she left, "You're going to miss him more than you're going to miss me." Well, Jasper the mini-schnauzer was certainly uncomplicated, being a dog, and relentlessly loyal, loving and joyful, so all those things are easy to miss. But he was also a constant presence in the house, and that was sometimes wearing. Rose was almost always leaving to go somewhere, and I always miss her, every day, but she's off on an adventure, and I honestly wish I were doing the same. They packed the car to bursting full, put the little dog bed in the backseat, and took off for the west coast.

They had planned to reach St. Ignace yesterday, and I hope camping wasn't too cold for them. I was plotting out the hours on the drive: three and a half hours to the border, another hour and a half to West Branch, and if they decide to 'shoot the loop' as we used to say about driving the whole NY freeway all around the tip of the lake - and they don't have too much trouble at the border, they should be able to make St. Ignace in 9 and a half or 10 hours. The weather was fine, a beautiful day for such a nice drive.

Suddenly fFull

The garage is once again filled with piles of boxes. rose packed up all her things and moved as much as she could out there.