What a day here in Portland. 70+ degrees and sunny all day.
What better time for my neighbor to break out his old-timey sprayer and start drenching his trees with noxious stuff? The trees hang over my fence? Well, then it was only right of him to tell me to get out of my yard because he has “flower disease” and “wants to get some plums this year.” The trees are already blooming, and what he describes as “flower disease” is likely brown rot. I told him as much. Too late to spray now. You need to… oh my god! he’s started the pump! I watched what looked like a geyser going off over my fence. Big stinky clouds floated over my bee blocks, my chicken coop, the vegetable beds. I nearly cried. Let’s hope it’s not DDT. He’s real old school.
OK, well, when I did have bees, I had two kinds in the blocks. One is the little black ones that pooped on my leg. The others are these guys that look very much like honey bees. I think they’re “red mason bees” but please tell me if you can identify these guys by species:
And before they were coated with thalidomide and malathion, the chickens looked like this in their new house:
My God! The chickens are huge! Must be the slugs. Hope everybody survives the chemical onslaught.
I just met one of my neighbors this afternoon. He apparently makes excellent jam from my craptastic plums (or from the branches that hang over his yard) and offered to give me some. So neighbors aren’t all bad. But don’t get me started on the ones next door.
What do you have those bees living in? PVC pipes? I would like to have a bee box… maybe after I get the chickens settled in… next year perhaps!
Well, I’ve tried one of everything. The pictures of those guys are from the PVC pipe version just cut off at 45 degrees and stuffed with bee straws.
I’ve also got 4×6 wood that I drilled with a drillpress and lined the holes with rolled up parchment paper.
Finally, there’s some nice cypress wood that I had left over from some tree work in the yard, and I’ve just drilled those with 5/16″ holes, mounted a “roof” on them, left the unlined, and mounted them to the south-facing fence. I may take those down and burn them if they’re not occupied. I’m a little concerned that they’re going to be mite havens.
Kelly, you can practically see chickens grow. It’s pretty amazing. The things are just about the size of an egg when you get them, and by 6 weeks, they pretty much look like chickens.
Neighbors… funny thing that… I had this New Urbanist mentality before. What’s with all the fences, maaaan? Come on, let’s be communal and share the earth!!! Then I lived next to our wackos in San Fran (the Republican drunk and the woman who loved to leave me notes about paying to have my satellite dish moved and how the front wheel of my motorcycle was on *her* part of the sidewalk.) Then the year in Japan… and Saiko Kamikaze-san next door. Now, we have pretty decent neighbors. The swingers are a little creepy, and the crotchety old guy and his chemical exudate leave something to be desired, but a little more fencing, and I think we’ll all be OK. It would seem that every other person is impossible to live next to.