Corn, jeans, bleaching, bugs, and the very entertaining Opiliones

I didn't plant corn this year. I have a ton of seed corn from last year and never used it. Even though it was a successful planting and it was fascinating and beautiful, it was a lot of work even doing everything the laziest way possible.

Say, if you need seed corn, just let me know!

This past winter, I finally got some heat installed in the front porch. Another thing that happened is that I found out that to patch the knees of jeans, one must open the leg at the non-flat-felled seam.

(By the way, this is a cicada killer wasp. I'd sing you their praises, but you can look them up. They are big and scary-looking, but they seem to only be a threat to cicadas! Woohoo! Seriously, they are wicked-looking but they remain a wonderful addition to your yard.)

WELL! The heat and the information opened up a whole new world and I started patching every pair of jeans in sight, with varying degrees of success. I started with using jeans fabric, but the fact is that most jeans fabric, by the time you're wearing a hole in it, is thin and soft and not at all like even worn jeans material.

So the jeans patches I made just created stress on the surrounding fabric and poof, more holes. I'm gradually changing how I deal with knees and other worn spots, depending on the fabric remaining and the wearer. This pair? This tropical tree is the 8th patch on these jeans. The addition of so many patches seems to make these winter-weight jeans, but ... well ... it's August and I can't really tell at this point.

This Baptisia australis, the wild blue indigo, is being used for clothes drying. Or clothes bleaching. I needed to put this garment in the sun, but also somewhere that the cat and the dog would not lay on them. Everything of mine gets flooped, flopped, rolled and laid upon by EQ and Zi.
I'm trying to get rust stains out with lemon, salt and sunshine.

This very plush and fuzzy beetle was hanging around the Chinese lantern/Physalis. I think it is VERY good-looking. When it flies, it flies smooth like a wasp. But it doesn't look like either a moth or a beetle. I never did find out what it was, besides attractive.

It has been a stellar year for Opiliones, or harvesters, or daddy longlegs. One morning, the backsplash in my kitchen sported EIGHTEEN of them! Last year the high number was twelve. Several have died in the sink. Several roam other parts of the house, but mostly, there seems to be ideal Opie conditions in the kitchen. OR! Maybe that's where the portal is. You know, kinda like the Stargate.

I try to leave water on the counter, since they sometimes drown getting to water. Yesterday I saw one carrying a flake of meatloaf. I busted out laughing and he/she dropped it. Hm. And when I work at the sink, there's just one. Like a scout. (I call it Opie Terminator; for a daddy long-legs, he's very forward!) He or she charges me! I don't want to hurt him or her, so I drum my fingers on the counter. (If I hit one with spray or food or oil or batter, who knows? I might drown them.) And it's funny. They will go away at the drumming, but there's a delayed response. Hmmm.

Life is interesting. Pay attention! Woohoo!