Burdock

This morning I spent some time picking out individual paper clips that I would like to keep, with the thought that I might literally be losing my mind. I went through the junk drawer in the kitchen, setting aside to keep only things that are habitually in use, and putting several tools with the items for the sale, tools I will probably need two weeks from now, but I feel kind of bad that the estate sale lady might just barely make her standard fee from our little sale, so I want to leave as many things for her as possible.

My sister came over and we, mostly her, did more furniture moving. After she left, I spent an hour in the yard weeding and clipping dead brown stalks and ivy, of which there is much. I had wanted in particular to get rid of some burdock that springs up outside the kitchen sink window, but it proved to be difficult to uproot. A weeder was useless, and even a trowel could get only the smallest couple of plants. I’ll have to go out there with an actual shovel if there’s time. This time I wore gloves, and along with the paper lawn and leaf bag, I brought a big bucket for carrying my few tools in and to put any bits of trash in. My glasses kept sliding down my face, so I will get something to keep them in place. I saw two live worms, but they didn’t hurt me.

The orange oil does not seem to be discouraging the carpenter bees; at least, I saw the lady bee this afternoon. I think it was the female because she went under the bench presumably to continue her efforts at making a hole for baby bees. I swept the sawdust out from under the bench yesterday, but there was more there today. Painting the bench might cause the bees to look elsewhere for shelter and apparently they also dislike wind chimes that make a robust clanging sound, not due to the sound itself but because of the vibration. Myself, I am partial to wind chimes, so that might be good all around.

It was sunny and humid today, about 80 degrees and with a nice breeze. In the late afternoon, I went for a walk. I exchanged names with a woman gardening on my own block, and I ran into my next door neighbor, Javier, walking his dog.

I had dinner on the deck, my customary salad, and was visited by two or three bees, one at a time. I think it’s because I was wearing a yellow apron of my mother’s, because my own was in the laundry. I consulted the internet and learned that bees are attracted to yellow, while good colors to wear if you don’t want bees hanging around are plain white, plain tan, or plain pale blue. Supposedly people who work with bees always wear plain white.