08/14/12

Today turned out to be a fairly productive day. I managed to get up with my alarm this morning for a change, so was able to go outside before work. I mowed weeds around the blackberries and raspberries, then mowed some in the area where we plan to begin prepping for next year's garden. I had been avoiding one area because the last time I worked there I was stung by a yellow jacket. After locating the other nest near the garden, though, I had hoped that the sting I had received before was from a yellow jacket that belonged in the other nest. Today I verified that there is a second nest in the area where I was stung before. Luckily I was being very cautious and wasn't stung today.

Around lunch time I had to go hunt down Jack. I heard some barking, and when I went out to see what was going I noticed someone walking down the road. It turns out the department of corrections had some people out picking up trash along the road. I could hear Luke and Jack barking, so knew they were down there. I called for them, and tried blowing the dog whistle, but neither would come. I finally rode the RTV down to the end of the driveway and was able to get Luke to come back. Jack was farther up the road, however, and wouldn't come. Eventually I had to go get the truck and drive up the road about half a mile to where the workers had stopped for a break. Jack was there with him, so I put him in the truck and took him back home. I'm not sure how far away he would have ended up had I not gone after him.

This evening after work I went back over to the garden to see if I could locate exactly where the new found yellow jackets nest was. I was able to locate it, but its not going to be quite as easy to get at as the other because it is at the base of a tree stump. We should still be able to deal with it, though.

After dinner we went back over to the garden so I could harvest the potatoes we had left in the ground. These were the Pontiac red potatoes. Andrea kept Jack, mostly, distracted while I dug them. He might have been help had he dug with me, instead of digging in the opposite direction and filling in the holes I was digging. The Pontiacs did much better than the other varieties did. We still didn't get the type of harvest I had hoped for, but we should have enough to eat out of several times. I'll try to get a total weight to include in the post I plan about the lessons learned from our first potato crop.