Continuing to Fight the Wildlife & Chicago-bound for the annual UMJC Convention.

Deer & black/brown butterflies have now entered the competition for our flowers & raspberries. Below is how some of our flower barrels look. Above is what they look like after I chased away a young doe. The multiple days of high heat have dried out the pastures & fields around here, so the deer are venturing close to our electic fencing to snatch lucious morsels. The butterflies appear to be in competition with the grasshoppers on who can eat the most raspberries. They are flying & jumping all around me as I pick. One rather large grasshopper sat on a ripe raspberry & looked straight at me, refusing to jump & give up his lunch. I believe a few ants have also entered the competition. The squirrels kept up their chatter as I picked, but they prefer to steal & store our strawberries.

A wasp stung me while I was near our back porch. Baking soda paste took care of the sting, but I hunted down those buggers. They don't know any better than to lead you right to their nest. These wasps built hives in our bird feeder... so I taped up the holes. On our return from the Chicago trip, I'll untape them & return them to their original use.

This week has flown as I have caught up on all the cleaning, laundry, garden weeding, daily intensive watering to hold the lawn & garden in this long stretch of 90-107 degree heat & also to prepare for our 10-12 day drive to Chicago starting tomorrow after services at Beth Tephila. We will be attending the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations Annual Conference. Louis & Ron Smith brought home the kaput Grand Am. (That's another story.) I took our Yukon to Hamilton for a tune-up & brakes job that took two days. We picked two cherry trees & shared the bounty with my parents, two friends with birthdays this week & of course the ever-present bees, wasps & birds. After blogging I will be freezing the remainder of the cherries, which are sitting on a tarp downstairs where it is cool. I planned to freeze the cherries yesterday, but ended up defrosting our upright freezer instead. After moving its contents to our chest freezer, it took much of the day to defrost the heavy build-up of frost so there would be room for the pickings of cherries & raspberries. I found several food items buried in the frost that I had forgotten were in the freezer!! Louis took two homemade tamales to work today as a result.