Quick Colorado Weekend

The kids are fantastic travelers now. When Q was a baby and we flew he screamed for HOURS inside the airport and I said no to air travel until he was old enough to entertain himself and not scream for hours. Since he's grown, he's been a FANTASTIC travel buddy and he can even carry his own luggage.

We usually stay in rental homes when we go because we do travel with quite a few people - it's much easier to coordinate schedules, lunches, and activities. This house was situated on a street with super easy access to an open space. There's gravel trails and we walked almost daily. There's so many holes for the prairie dogs that you can hardly go two steps without seeing them pop up from their holes. They're super cute and they sound like one of Phil's squeaky toys.

This is Eldorado Canyon State Park. If you look along the closest rock ridge line you'll see mountain climbers. There were 4 that we could see (though without my glasses I could just see their bright color shirts so I was useless at spotting them. LOL). 

The canyon is a pretty walk. 

Eventually you come around and out of the canyon so you can see down into the valley and out of the foothills - Eldorado looks down on Superior, Louisville, and Broomfield.

A soccer field. LOL. I had to take a photo because here in Minnesota, our soccer field views are most definitely not mountains.

Mesa Trail with family. The trailhead for this is actually located on the same road as Eldorado Canyon state park and this gets BUSY. When we were walking back down I think maybe 25 people had passed us. Colorado is no longer a place where you are all alone when you hike, you are always either passing someone else or are being passed on trails. I have found that people are not polite either. I always say hi or good morning or good afternoon and there were definite assholes on the trail! One woman left the bathroom door open, the seat up and didn't understand how the compost toilets work (she also didn't say excuse me or runner ahead or thank you when we moved off the trail and I hope she's having the life that she deserves, sorry, I'm petty today! LOL). 

Overall, our trip was great, we got to see my husband's 96 year old grandma and we had a fabulous time seeing family. I hope we get to see everyone again soon!

 

Northern Lights in the Twin Cities

Last week the Northern Lights appeared in the Twin Cities. Normally because of all the light pollution you can barely even see the stars. Ironically enough I'm in the middle of a book called Night Magic which is all about the life that takes place in nature at night - it's so good, highly recommend and I'm actually reading it for my Master Gardener book club. 

The pinks are unusual to see.

Pictures usually show the colors way more vibrant than what you see in real life. We could see all the colors but they weren't as bright and showy as what you see. BUT you could still notice that something was going on in the sky with the pink. It's a little strange to see the lights in the sky!

Northern Lights are the chemical reaction from solar storms when the particles hit Earth's atmosphere. Normally in northern Minnesota you can see the greens and sometimes they're really active.

For whatever reason, the solar storm last week was really intense and our atmosphere did a great job of protecting us from the solar storm and we got to see the show!

The colors were gorgeous and I'm positive this was probably a once in a lifetime experience. I'm happy that we went outside to watch and see what was happening.

 

The Ground Wasp Saga

 

Back in July I was stung by a wasp while I was watering the garden. At first I thought wasps had made a nest in the sugar maple tree next door but I was VERY WRONG. They were ground wasps and they had made a nest in my raised bed.

Last year when I was putting together the beds I used the hugelkulture method of layering materials. I used leftover tree logs from the neighbor's tree - a HUGE branch had fallen and so I grabbed the branches that didn't get taken by our neighbor for their fireplace. One log was hollow (which is why the branch had fallen, it was extremely unstable). I thought I had truly filled it all the way with compost and leaves but I guess I made a lovely hibernation chamber for a wasp Queen instead. 

I learned an unfortunate lesson. Do not use hollow logs.

I used so many cans of wasp spray but there was just no way that I was able to get the whole nest. I used traps and trapped an unbelievable amount of wasps. But finally, the weather changed.

Wasps are temperature dependent upon flying and once it hits temps 50 degrees or lower, they get really sluggish and are unable to fly or move quickly, which means after their extremely aggressive months of August and September - you can finally relax and kill the shit out of them. The night temps were dipping into the 30s and I finally observed only 1-2 wasps flying out of the nest at a time. 

Yesterday it was 44 degrees. I decided to go for it. 

One thing to note: when wasps make nests, they actually create their own heat so stay warm to protect their babies. I knew that if I didn't expose the nest to the cold air I would probably have another nest next year.

I poked the nest and dislodged the log out of place - only 1 wasp flew out so I exposed the whole nest to the cold and pulled it apart to see what I was working with. There were maybe 25 wasps left that crawled out into the cold. They couldn't fly and could barely move.

This week was going to be warmer - but this upcoming weekend with temps in the low 40s would have been another good time to pull apart the nest. If I had wanted to do this in any warmer temperatures, I would have called in exterminator professionals because earlier this summer when I was stung, I also discovered that I'm allergic to wasps. My hand swelled up larger than a baseball and I was so itchy. A full 7 days of prednisone was most helpful but man, I never want to be stung again!

So this year, to remedy and refill my raised bed, I got a free bag of topsoil from a neighbor, I have compost from my compost pile and I have a full bag of straw to mix in. Because I used wasp spray, I washed off the galvanized metal bed with dish soap and I will not grow edibles in the bed next year, I am going to have to grow flowers next year and do soil testing for specific chemicals if possible to be able to plant edibles. I'll update as I go along.

SOOOOOO... get those wasp nests taken care of and make sure you kill the queen so she doesn't make a nest in your fresh garden beds next year!