Had a wildlife encounter of the negative kind the other day. I was clearing an area of jungle that had reverted and was banged by a yellow jacket or wasp or some other kindred spirit. I never saw it so can’t be totally sure but it was like getting smacked on the side of the head by a baseball bat. It was between the top of my ear and my left eye and actually drew blood it hit so hard. If you’ve never experienced it, no way to describe it other than the bat to the head description. I put ice on it and popped a benadril to get ahead of the swelling and managed to keep it down to a manageable pain level. Four days later I still have some local swelling and the area is sore to the touch. If you’re wondering why I picked that area to clear, about 5 years ago I had cleared the area and planted a banana plant. We enjoyed a load of finger bananas the next year but nothing after that due to winter freezes. I gave up and the jungle recaptured the clearing. George wanted to clear that general vicinity from his side of the fence which to our surprise, exposed that the banana plant was alive and looking fairly healthy. I guess the thick jungle had protected the plant from last year’s multiple freezing events. I tossed a couple handfuls of fertilizer around the base of the plant and who knows, maybe we’ll be back in the banana business this year.

George had a party for his biker club over at his place with an estimated 50 guests. It was perfect to check out the new dock expansion as a dummy run for Simon’s graduation party. As it turned out, all the biker chicks came over to our dock and the biker dudes were over on George’s fishing for bream. I stuck with the chicks and it only got too raunchy for me to handle a couple of times. There was one gal with large legs that were tatoo’d from ankle to ……………. Definitely not a church choir crowd but I had just enough wine to love it. Nancy was there most of the time to chaperone me but I think any one of them could have taken me in an arm wrestling contest. One interesting thing about the party was the number of people carrying firearms. You would think at a simple club barbecue with a tub or two of beer, it might make sense to leave the guns at home. So late in the afternoon, a “who’s gun is loudest” or “who can hit the water” contest broke out and it sounded like a gun range next door – where next door is the adjacent dock about 50′ away. Even had a “didn’t know the gun was loaded” incident where one guy blew a hole in the screen on George’s dock with a short barrel shotgun. My first biker party. Simon’s graduation party at the lake is next week and I’m going to make a wild guess that it will be a much tamer event. Lot’s of grannies and gramps. I won’t even break out the pellet gun unless we find ourselves under attack by killer turtles or something.

We switched from Spring to Summer last week. The daily weather forecast goes from 88/68 with little or no chance of rain and 60% humidity to 92/72 with a 40% chance and 90% RH. Yellow flies are replaced by yellow jackets and I break out the yellow jacket traps. That’s actually a good thing. And the little tiny, hard biting mosquitoes are replaced by big, slow moving, easy to swat mosquitoes. That’s a good thing too. Over the summer the temps will creep up a couple of degrees but this is about it until the end of Sept. I’ll get one more month out of the garden for most of the veggies before I hang it up until fall. But mostly, we just start moving around on summer time – slower; a more relaxed pace. Switch from wine to gin and tonic. Switch from fishing at 6PM to fishing at 7PM. Replace the small umbrella in the trunk of the car to two umbrellas in the back seat. Lots of big adjustments like that.