Bees and Brakes,

Horses and Tomatoes,
And Other Stuff Too!

Out of Scrabblebuff's hometown in Washington state comes what is probably the BEGINNING of a humming saga.

This saga began yesterday afternoon with a call from SB wanting some advice."Daddy, who would you think would be responsible for removing a bee's nest from inside the walls of my house, the landlord or me?"

And then "and outside the house there's a big nest of either wasps or hornets," This part of the two-headed problem probably is easy to solve.

Those hornets or wasps OUTSIDE the house most likely are the responsibility of DRUMMER BOY (aka SB's hubby) who, armed with cans of 20-foot spray from a garden shop, should be able to murder most of the flying critters once they get into the nest for the night.

Now for the bees INSIDE the house and in the walls, which, incidentally, are preventing the use of an important part of the household - the upstairs rest room. That room is no longer a place for rest I hear.

My first answer and advice was " the landlord is responsible and you should call her." Good answer and advice says SB "but I've been trying to reach her on the phone but this is just about the time she is vacationing in Hawaii."

Scrabblebuff is a daughter with a lot of brains. (just try playing Scrabble with her!) She's canvassed the beekeepers of the area and found a friendly one with some advice.

He has opined that with the amount of activity seen in the rest room as described by SB, and the sounds she hears in the wall, that she probably has a fifty (50) pound honeycomb between the interior and exterior walls of the house and a population of 20,000 honey bees, give or take a few dozen.

"Could you remove them?" SB wanted to know. ""Oh, sure, was the answer but it would cost about $600 and that doesn't include the cost of opening the walls and then re-building them again." There's a problem.

I can't solve the problem but since the beekeeper said HONEYBEES, it would seem to me that if he removed 20,000 bees he would also be getting many pounds of HONEY, which , as a knowing businessman, he could sell at a handsome profit (honey is an expensive delicacy).

Scrabblebuff, if she hasn't already recalled, perhaps will soon remember that back in Pennsylvania and in many other parts of the country most beekeepers recover honey from unwanted places for folks just for the opportunity to make themselves a good living selling honey.

I haven't talked today with SB but hope she might figure this out and make a deal. Now ripping apart the house and re-building is another
conundrum. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

BRAKES SOMETIMES FAIL

And when they do, what happens? Usually an accident - you bash the car into the rear of somebody else's car or truck, get a ticket from a cop for following too closely and/or driving with defective equipment.

But you are at home, just arriving in your driveway after work and easing into your carport. Our next-door lady neighbor stepped on the brake pedal the other day as she started into her carport.

In an instant, the carport was down and atop the car and the backyard cinder-block storage shed was spread helter-skelter all around . Nobody hurt. No tickets. Oh, yeah, no brakes either.

TWO TOMATOES, TWO HORSES

After weeks of waiting for her single tomato vine back of the house to provide her some red tomatoes, my DIL harvested two the other day.

Then she noticed the two horses in the next lot needed water in their trough just over the fence.

Garden hose in one hand, two tomatoes and a squash in the other, DIL commenced to pour water into the trough. Horse number one sidled up to her along the fence and with a sudden lunge, snagged and ate a red tomato.

Startled, DIL noted horse number two approaching and, trying to protect the squash she also had harvested, wasn't quick enough to prevent horse number one from sneaking his snout over the fence again and wolfing down the other red orb. And they say humming birds are attracted by red.

Well, the horse needed the water. One was hungry, too!

WAS THE CHIEF HAPPY ?

On Main Street in Jacksonville, the one in Florida, not Vermont, a man hurrying too fast was pulled over by a cop, according to Clarence and Millicent Powell, a couple of Jacksonville acquaintances.

"But officer," the man said, "I can explain." "Be quiet," the officer said, "I'm going to let you cool your heels in jail until the chief gets back."

"But officer I just wanted to say" and from the cop "And I said to keep quiet, you're going to jail."

Two hours or so later the cop looked in on his prisoner and said:

"Lucky for you the chief is at his daughter's wedding." He"ll be in a good mood when he comes back."

"Don't count on it," says the fellow in the cell, "I'm the groom."

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