Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Garden surprises

This weekend, Jeff and I were welcomed to two big surprises in our garden.

The first- a happy one. What happens when you have a boy kiwi plant beside a girl kiwi plant? They produce a maze of unruly, curling and unbelievably long vines that make lots of baby kiwis. I'm quite excited about this new crop.




















The second was a not-so happy surprise. Jeff and I thought this was the largest hornet's nest we'd ever seen. Nanaimo went pesticide and chemical-free this year, so we had to resort to creative ways to deal with the nest. Thankfully, Jeff's parents had their own huge wasp nest the same week and were able to inspire some MacGuyver-ing with their shop vac, a ladder and some wire. Jeff's estimation was that we vacuumed up about 500 angry hornets.

3 comments:

Janelle said...

Oh my...your own kiwis?? I bet they taste FANTASTIC!!!

You might have even gotten rid of more than 500 wasps...I've been watching Billy the Exterminator (don't judge), and nests those size often have 2-3x more than that!

Anonymous said...

So who cleaned out the shop vac?

To where do we send the get-well cards?

Stef said...

Funny thing is- hornets don't survive a trip through the shop vac. That's the amazing power and wonderful-ness of the shop vac.