Frankly, if we had a community garden, and there was a community water feature, (pond? pool? hot tub? splash pad? trampoline with a sprinkler underneath?) I would be more than happy to pay my Home Owners Fees to ensure someone kept my lawn maintained and snow removed in the appropriate seasons. And, since Husband is upstairs putting the children to bed and therefore has no say in this blog, I am also here to tell you Husband is in complete agreement with me.
I don't know what the deal is-- perhaps we're too lazy, perhaps we're not environmentally conscious enough, perhaps it's that we're not zoned for a lawn-mowing goat, I don't know. But, spending our precious free time sweating, weeding, cutting and bagging is just not something in which we're interested.
That said, today I went outside to rake the mulch.
See, we put in this beautiful mulch this year-- black as night with wee white specks in it-- made of recycled, chewed up tires, and it's truly very slick to behold. Cheap, too, because we should (theoretically) never have to replace it, unlike regular mulch that biodegrades every year or two, we all know tires are the diamonds of human creation-- they last forever.
The tire mulch does everything the regular mulch does. It prohibits weed growth, it creates an outdoor litterbox for feral cats, the list goes on and on. It just doesn't ever get less black, or less in ... uh, there-ness. (oh, and if you're really excited about it, the recycled tires come in a bunch of different colours, like that reddy-orange and brown you see for mulch, too) At any rate, the one downfall might be that because nothing biodegrades, all plant matter that falls onto it just kinda sits there. Just kinda hangs out, making the posh stuff look messy and ugly.
SO, I was outside raking the debris out of my mulch and feeling pretty good about it, actually, while Kiddo #1 ran around chasing a couple of Monarch butterflies and Kiddo #2 chased Kiddo #1. Blah blah blah, it was a lovely, overcast, cool-esque day for August.
Kiddo #1 marveled at the Monarch Butterfly, chased it from tree to tree. She called out about the big honey bees that were also (apparently) buzzing around. I reminded her not to bother them and they won't bother her. She then said, "Mom, I'm afraid of bees!" Without missing a beat, I said, "Honey, there's nothing to be afraid of. Some people are afraid of bees, some are afraid of snakes, some, like me, are afraid of ninjas. But really, it's all pretty silly because unless you bother the wild bugs and things, they won't bother you."
I didn't tell her that Ninjas rappel into your house in the middle of the night to avenge 1000 year old grudges, unlike the bugs, and that you won't even know what you did wrong when they attack you and leave you and your family dead, unlike bugs. I figure there's lots of time for her to figure that last part out. No need to start her ninja fear any earlier than age 9.
At any rate, she continued to blather on about bees and how scary they are and how big they are. I, harnessing my ADHD for good, continued to remind her that they're not that big, that elephants are much bigger, and that neither one of them will hurt her first, without so much as looking up, while continuing to rake and sift my mulch. Kiddo #2 cooed his agreement with me.
Then she was telling me about how bees attack butterflies. I said, "Oh honey, bees aren't attackers, and bees and butterflies are friends." She said that she's seen butterflies be attacked by bees and that the bees are mean. I mean really. I was starting to get annoyed with her insistence about the bees being scary and ferocious. Plus, I bought this Groupon to go to a bee farm not too far from our house-- how was I going to get her to the bee farm for our end-of-summer adventure if she's already determined that bees are horrible creatures?
I got closer to her butterfly and finally agreed to take a break from my precious raking to check out her butterfly. I watched her butterfly on the lilac tree and couldn't help but notice some strange behaviour of three bees on the tree. They seemed to be huddled around some white frothy substance on the tree. Eating it? And the bees were mostly black with just a little yellow on the bodies.
And then I saw it: the bee Kiddo #1 had clearly been talking about all this time. Good LORD! It was so big that I actually thought for a moment it must be a Queen Bee. But, again with the freakin' Groupon, I didn't want the Kiddos to get a fear of bees. So Kiddo #1 and I, almost entranced, watched the biggest bee I'd ever seen. It was easily the size of my pointer finger to the first knuckle. In measurements it was, like, 5 cms or maybe a full two inches long. SHOCKINGLY large.
We watched the bees for a few minutes while I tried to decide the easiest, least fear-inducing way of getting the children inside. I had everyone come in and get my phone (you can see our sweet mulch in the bottom of the picture) and we piled out again to take some pictures of the bees-- my only thought was "What if they're mean and angry?" In retrospect, I suppose we would've already known if they were mean and nasty because my daughter who had been playing near them would be covered. Or I'd be covered, or the baby. However, I still was concerned. I'd never, for example, seen an Africanized Bee (is that even the correct name?).
At any rate, I googled "enormous bee" and got nothing of use. I then googled "africanized bee" and found that "my" bees weren't anything like that. I then thought, "Well, what if it's not a bee at all, and it's some sort of wasp?" so I googled "gigantic wasp with mostly black butt." And lo' and behold, there was "my bee."
It's called a Cicada Killer Wasp. If you Wikipedia that (and if you pretend Wikipedia is, in fact, research) you will find it's a very non-threatening type wasp that kills cicadas (hence the name). They also don't make wasp nests, they make burrows (like those scary trap-door spiders that eat mice and kangaroos and things). They have huge mouths that they use to paralyze their prey and drag them back to their homes for feasting and fun.
And, in the meantime, I think I've figured out what might just be slowly killing our lilac-- these dang things are biting into our lilac trunk and drinking the sap like frickin' Cullens. Where the Cicada Killer Wasps have been harvesting has left the leaves and such wilted and dry.
On the plus side, uh, no one was stung or otherwise traumatized. As well, we've been needing to cut back the lilac tree but haven't had the heart-- now with the big dead sections there's no reason to not. Plus, where there's Edward Cullen, there's Jacob, and that hunky, hairless werewolf can come by any day. In fact, according to the well-hung moon in the sky, Jacob might be right around the corner.
Heeeere doggy, doggy, doggy.
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