Catch and Release Wasps

Today I found a wasp in our window trying to get out.  I try my best to preserve life, and that includes our pollinator and insect control friends.  Today's wasp happened to be a parasite wasp of some sort, possibly a spider parasite.  Via trial and error I have found the easiest way for all concerned to catch wasps and bees and release them unharmed (and me un-stung) outdoors.

I get a wide-mouth Mason jar and a piece of stiff chipboard. I then cup the wasp on the window and carefully slide the chipboard so that it covers the mouth of the jar while the wasp is inside the jar.  Make sure, of course, to keep the wasp from escaping or trapping its leg in the jar.  Invert the jar so that the chipboard is at the bottom and the jar is facing down. I hold the jar with both hands, one hand under the chipboard supporting it and the other firm on top. Insects instinctively fly upward in their attempts to escape, so it will fly to the top of the inside of the jar.

Take the jar outside, hold it facing upward and away from you, and remove the chipboard.  The wasp will likely fly out of the jar and away as fast as it can, without a backward glance.  Make sure it's a fairly quick process.  A prolonged process agitates the wasp.  If the window is in the sun, the wasp will be moving faster and may be harder to catch.  I have never been stung catching and releasing stinging insects this way.

The photo below shows the wasp in the jar after capture.  The wasp is small and dark and in the lower left hand part of the jar.

Raspberries

The past several weeks have been spent harvesting our homegrown red raspberries and wild black raspberries.  While it's fresh on my mind, for those who may want to grow and harvest them, here is my experience.

The photo below shows black raspberries in various stages of ripeness.  The darkest one, dark blue/purple and shiny, is the ripe one.  It should come off the plant with a slight tug (except for my group of plants whose berries require a big tug).  The berry should be firm.  If the berry is that same color but dull and soft, it is overripe and should not be harvested.  The other berries in the cluster will ripen in the subsequent several days.  The warmer the ambient temperature, the faster they will ripen.  What's really nice is if you find a whole cluster of ripe berries.  Then you can just gently tug them off into your hand or container.  

I try to pick in the shade and with a breeze, or it's too hot and/or the mosquitoes will eat me alive.

We are now harvesting the first bearing of the Prelude red raspberries. The darkest berries in the photo below are ready for picking.  They should come off the bush easily and should be firm.  Check for any moisture or insects in the berry's cup.  Pitch if there is any moisture, as it's over ripe.  If the berry is firm, you can shoo the bugs off.  If there are fruit fly larvae in the cup, don't keep it.  The larvae are white and maybe 2 mm long.

This next part applies to both black and red raspberries.  If it's too early in the day, or if the humidity is high, or if it just rained the prior day or overnight, the berries are wet.  Rain causes the berries to dissolve and ruins them.  It's best to wait several hours for the berries to dry before harvesting.  And even then, those berries may have a shorter shelf life.  Generally black raspberries harvested at the proper ripeness will last longer in the fridge than red raspberries.  I can get maybe 3 days out of the blacks before having to cook or freeze them.  I may get only 2 days out of the reds. Check the paper towel in the bottom of the container several times daily.  If there is berry staining, they are starting to go and should be used.  When I sell them, I tip out the berries into another container and remove the moldy berries, if any.

It is essential to store the berries in a container with perforated sides to allow them to breathe.  I prefer the plastic commercial containers, as they are stackable. The berries are incredibly fragile.  They should always be kept in the fridge.  If you are getting some but not all of the berries out of the container to use, don't touch the ones you're putting back with wet hands.  Any moisture on the berries will dramatically shorten their shelf life.

The berries will degrade if taken to the farmer's market, even packed on ice in the cooler.  I put ice packs on the bottom, then put a plastic bag on top to keep the berries dry, then layers of berries.  Keep the coolers in the shade at all times.

I have been picking for several hours daily for the past several weeks.  I check the forecast and if rain is forecast I try to pick as much as possible before the rain. Our berry patches are so large that one person (me) cannot possibly pick all the berries. Hopefully we can open this up to u-pick next year. 

Welcome Back!

 Welcome Back!

After a several-year hiatus, I am resuming the Rejoice and Be Glad In It blog. Thanks immensely to my bestie P for providing the link to the blog. It's a rainy windy spring day, good for coffee-drinking, evidently writing, or perhaps sitting reading on the couch with a cat or two on my lap.  Ahh, retirement!!

Today's thoughts of resuming the blog began when I realized that for the past several years, virtually all of the nature-writing I have eagerly read is subtly (or not) infused with liberal ideology counter to my current worldview.  Back in the day most of the nature writing I recall was simply that.  There was no overt or implied verbiage regarding the verboten topics of religion or politics and their respective rabbit trails.  This nature writing was friendly to any belief system.  Unfortunately, nowadays, at least in my world, apparently most stuff of any topic available to read is slanted one way or the other.  That upsets me.  Is it too much to ask to be open-minded to other viewpoints, explore them wisely without judgement, and politely respect one another?  There is often something useful to glean.  I admit, it is nearly impossible for me to continue reading articles lambasting my viewpoint, but also even lambasting the opposite viewpoint.  It's very embarrassing to read rude conservative articles.  How far do the authors think liberals would get in those articles before stopping reading in disgust?  Or are these articles meant to fan the flames of passion for whatever viewpoint, and make it easier for supporting readers to continue funding the article source?

I am going out on a limb here.  I used to be broadly conservative, then was broadly liberal for several exploratory decades, and am now once again generally conservative, with some exceptions.  My liberal friends may be upset at reading this.  My guess is that this is news to many of them.  True friends will remain my friend on the basis of commonalities and love/respect for each other, and overlook the differences.  My intent is definitely not to insult anyone but to give folks something to think about.

The nature and focus of future posts is to be determined.  I am waffling between continuing the prior thread of giving the Lord of the Universe (God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) the glory regarding His creation, or generic posts.  At this point I will probably have a little of each, time permitting.

If you wish to comment on this blog post, I will not entertain debate via the blog.  I am happy to discuss further privately.

Thanks for listening and for respecting my viewpoint and wishes.

And on a lighter note - happy spring!

Insomnia

Black and Blue Salvia

Like many others, my hubby and I have frequent insomnia.  One of the motivations for this blog was to attempt to encourage other insomnia-sufferers.  The idea was to write in the middle of the night - I may as well be productive if I can't sleep.  However, so far I've been unsuccessful at being cheerful and composed enough during those times to be able write anything meaningful, with the exception of the below.  It is the actual first entry chronologically of this blog and has been edited a bit .....

Sat. Sept. 15, 2012 1:21 AM

Ok, it's begun.  I have decided to write a blog during my insomnia, inspired by an article in Ladies Home Journal by an insomniac who wrote her first novel in the middle of the night while her husband slept.  He was mighty grateful, I suppose, that she stopped inadvertently keeping him awake.  (Later I learned that acclaimed author Barbara Kingsolver also wrote her first novel during pregnancy insomnia.)  My husband is in the basement once again nursing his own insomnia, as I write.  In fact, straining my ears while in bed in the dark, wondering where he was and if he was returning, woke me further.  I finally got up and found that he was in the basement.  So I had free reign to turn on lights and the computer.  Now my co-pilot Scout Kitty is purring beside me on the chair.

This was also started because the Lord gave me an incredible gift the same day that He showed me the article in the ladies' restroom of my employer.  He gives me gifts of nature since He knows how much I love His creation.  His gift involved a female ruby-throated hummingbird suddenly appearing and nectaring a mere two feet away from me!!  I was getting the mail from the mailbox and was admiring the black and blue salvia nearby, fresh in re-bloom from the badly-needed recent rains.  Suddenly my eyes caught a movement and it was her.  Hummers are so incredible the way they seemingly hang in mid-air.  She methodically inserted her beak into each flower after first looking me over to verify I was not The Enemy.  I was so awestruck that I froze and held my breath.  She stayed!  She sipped from each bloom, for possibly up to a minute!  The late afternoon sun caught her fresh green iridescence and her soft white feathers elsewhere.  Then she was gone, in an instant.  That is the closest I have ever been to a hummer except when I watched them being banded in southern Illinois a few years ago.

One of the neatest bookmarks someone gave me states the following:  "Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them."  (Psalm 111:2).  It has a neat painting of seashells, another gift He has given me numerous times over the years.  My mom probably gave me the bookmark, since she introduced me to seashells and we share a love of them.  Or perhaps my friend P gave it, since she also knows about the Lord providing gifts from nature.

I don't know if this verse intended the reader to delight in His works of nature, such as seashells, but I do and so do many others.  I think He is fine with that.  That is, as long as we give credit where credit is due:  God Himself.  He created all these lovely things of nature.  The bookmark is marking Psalm 121 in my NASB Bible:

Psalm 121

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Lord the Keeper of Israel.

A Song of Ascents.

121 I will lift up my eyes to the mountains;
From where shall my help come?
² My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
³ He will not allow your foot to slip;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
⁴ Behold, He who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
⁶ The sun will not smite you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
⁷ The Lord will ^[a]protect you from all evil;
He will keep your soul.
⁸ The Lord will ^[b]guard your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forever.

 

Did you catch that?  He made heaven and earth.  He made seashells with all their lovely colors and shapes.  If you would, notice verse four that states that He neither slumbers nor sleeps.  And He protects us.  In verse seven He states that He will keep our soul.  I interpret that to mean He will keep our emotions and spirit intact through storms of ill health, job loss, and relationship upheaval.  Why not really read and meditate on this chapter?  David wrote many of the Psalms from his difficult life.  He just says it like it is.  And here he makes it clear how our Great God can do anything to protect us from the storms of life.  For many months I  read this Psalm every night right before bed to put my mind in the right place for the rest of the night.  I had to read it daily because I need constant reminders.  Now I read other Psalms and other passages as needed, for variety.

The children of Israel had the pillar of cloud by day and of flame by night, God parting the Red Sea, and daily manna (not too much, not too little) and still after all those constant daily signs and miracles, it took them 40 years of wandering in circles and relearning the same lessons to get to their destination.  And Moses was within an inch of getting there, having been brought all along by God, and at the last minute lost his temper one more time with their faithlessness and sin.  He sinned himself by not following God's precise instructions and losing his temper, and that was enough to keep him from the Promised Land.  I am no better than the Israelites.

So here I am in my lack of faith at nearly 2 a.m. rereading The Word and gritting my teeth in faith.  (Actually right now I am really having a good time and not in the least sleepy, enjoying the start of this blog journey), even if I am up the rest of the night and have a full day of chores ahead of me tomorrow and entertaining tomorrow night, He will give me adequate strength for the day.  (Note:  I was up till about 4 a.m.)  How do I know this?  His Word and experience of many years of insomnia.

 

If I can by these writings help even one person, with God's guidance and help, it will have been worth losing all that sleep.  After all, He allows things to happen to us for our good and for His glory.  If He is better glorified by insomnia so that I now have the found time to pray for others or write things to help people, so much the better! 

What I would love to share with people is that He has created some beautiful things in nature here on earth and in the sky.  My friend P has been kind enough to share her own insomnia stories about how she gets up in the night to let her dog out to do her business.  While her dog is outside, P is looking up at the stars and planets and marveling at the One Who made it all.  And He has all the myriads of stars counted, accounted for, knew each one as He made it and when and how long it would be in existence before it would wink out.  How many billions of universes are there?  He knows.  He created them all.

 

Solar Clothes Drying

Homemade clothespin holder

Multi-purpose clothesline - hummer feeders also!

Hang clothes inside out for faster drying and less fading.

I don't know about you, but I grew up hanging clothes outdoors (or indoors in the basement on rainy days) to dry.  My grandmothers also did it.  Nowadays it seems few city folk do that.  It's a shame wasting all that free solar energy.  Plus there is nothing quite so sweet-smelling as solar dried bed sheets to sink into after a long day.  I've seen all sorts of wonderful birds flying overhead while hanging clothes.  Our forebears were environmentalists without realizing it.  Now we live in a culture of what I call pseudo-environmentalism or selective environmentalism:  Prius-driving folks who live in subdivisions with covenants prohibiting something as unsightly as an outdoor clothesline.  One has to be practical with one's environmentalism.  Thankfully I married a man with my same priorities in that department who has taught me numerous new tricks regarding solar drying.  Several of those tricks are depicted in the photos above.  Others are below:

• Check the weather beforehand.  Hang on a day with 20% or less rain chance.  Check the hourly forecast since the daily forecast usually has a higher chance of rain.  Check the radar.
• You can hang in the winter.
• Windy sunny days with less humidity dry clothes faster.  Duh.
• Turn clothes wrong side out.  Jeans dry faster (thanks, hubby) and colors don't fade.
• If you are low on clothespins, double up or share from one item to the next.
• Wipe the clothesline off with a wet paper towel chased by a clean one before hanging, especially whites.
• If you leave clothes outdoors on the line in the rain all day, the wooden clothespins turn dark.  Don't use them later on white or light-colored clothes because they will stain the clothes dark.
• You can make a clothespin holder for free using a gallon plastic milk jug... after you finish drinking the milk. You cut a hole in the side and put a repurposed clothes hanger wire through the top and presto, you have a practical albeit unattractive but free clothespin holder.  You may have to rebend the wire a bit to keep it from blowing off the line on windy days.  Again, thanks, hubby!
• You can dry clothes AND increase indoor non-basement humidity by putting your clothes on drying racks in front of upstairs heat vents in the winter.  Once again, thanks, hubby!
• Clotheslines can be used for other purposes, such as hanging plants, hummingbird feeders (both plastic and fuschia hanging baskets), or winter bird feeders.
• Regarding the latter above, squirrels are not able (at least in my experience) to access bird feeders hung from clotheslines if the feeders are propped by clothesline poles and held in place by clothespins.  However, if the clothesline is too close to a tree branch, squirrels will sit on the branch and neatly nip the clothesline in two in order to access the feeders.  So, that is why our white dogwood tree no longer hangs over the clothesline and is thus lopsided.
• Make sure your neighbor is not burning trash or yard waste before you hang clothes.
• Pokeweed in bird poop washes out of clothes.

Happy hanging!

P.S.  Yes, I DO use the clothes dryer for some items like nice soft bath towels, much to hubby's chagrin.  For one thing, it's a much faster cleanup when you accidentally leave a kleenix in a jeans pocket.  It was a definite patience-building exercise discovering a washed kleenix in hundreds of pieces in hubby's clothes.  He doesn't want his clothes put in the dryer, so I did a lot of hand picking that morning.  But a good memory test for next time.  And my policy is - if I find loose change in his pockets, sometimes it becomes mine....if it's a penny or dime, but not if it's the whole pocketful.

Pipevine

Pipevine, so named because its blooms resemble the shape of a Meerschaum  pipe, was commonly grown before the days of air conditioning.  Its beautiful heart-shaped leaves (like those of a morning glory) densely covered arbors, under which ladies in long skirts sipped lemonade in welcome shade on stifling hot summer days.

I grow it because it is one of only two caterpillar foodplants in Illinois for the lovely pipevine swallowtail.  The native pipevine is Aristolochia tomentosa, or woolly pipevine.  The other larval foodplant is snakeroot, A. serpenteria.  I have grown both species, though more successful with the former.  I see the latter species more commonly in southern Illinois, and the former species scattered throughout the state, usually in dry shady areas.  However, pipevine will do just fine in full sun also.  It's a twiner and will twine around a chain link fence or anything else similar.  If left to its own devices, it can climb to the top of a large tree.

I had one plant that covered the crown of a mature crab apple, smothering it in time.  I was torn between leaving the vine in place to provide caterpillar and bird nesting habitat or cutting it to save the tree.  However, the tree had lived a long productive life. When the ice storm several years ago weighted down the tree, most of the branches broke and I had no choice but to cut the tree down.  Pipevine suckers up to 20' from the parent plant.  Suckers are easily controlled via mowing.  If you wait to mow, the new suckers will grow several inches, providing tender young leaves on which the female butterflies prefer to lay their orange eggs.  Every time I would mow, I would check the suckers and rescue eggs and caterpillars.  Now my husband does the mowing (YEEHAH!!), so I have to remember to check.

Pipevine is not that easy to find, nor is it commonly grown these days.  Those who are into native plants (i.e., IL Native Plant Society, http://www.ill-inps.org/) grow it.  If you grow pipevine, eventually the pipevine swallowtail butterfly may show up.  "Plant it and they will come."  I've done that with all 6 of our native swallowtail butterfly species:  planted their caterpillar foodplants and eventually I would see either caterpillars or butterflies of those species.

Here's another useful link about pipevine with a marvelous photo of a plant covering an arbor:
http://www.nababutterfly.com/pipevine.html

One thing I've wanted to do for decades is plant pipevine "nearby."  Hmm, it wasn't too hard with persimmons.....

P.S.  "Now for something completely different:"  I just saw a sulphur butterfly flying by on this late November day.  It's 57 degrees out!

Planting Persimmons

Yesterday I did something I've wanted to do for decades:  plant persimmon seeds.

For those of you who don't know, properly ripened native persimmons taste like brown sugar.  They can be made into the most delicious quick bread - served warm with butter - mmmm!  Incorporate some homegrown hazelnuts or native Illinois pecans and even better!  Or make persimmon chiffon pie with hickory nuts and you have a real delicacy.  Persimmons are worth the work involved.

But most people think of persimmons as those awful puckery fall fruits because of someone teasing them with a firm unripe fruit, or because of their ignorance.  A ripe persimmon is so soft and squishy it is about one click this side of fermented.

My grandmother made persimmon pudding as one of her annual Thanksgiving desserts after serving us fried quail shot by Grandad and the other men in the family.  Wow!  Nowadays wild quail are very rare.  Little did we realize what a treat we'd taken for granted.  My mother took on the persimmon tradition and I have followed.  I've been pulping persimmons and cooking with them for 30 years now.  I planted a few persimmon seeds in our yard around 8 years ago and one tree bore its first persimmon this year.

See the following link for more info:  http://www.dnr.illinois.gov/OI/Documents/Oct06Persimmons.pdf

But I digress.

Yesterday I planted seeds of the very best early pre-frost (rare and much sweeter than the normal post-frost-ripening) persimmons I've had.  I placed them "nearby" and hope if we are still around eight or so years from now to see some of the surviving trees bearing fruit.  It was so much fun choosing planting sites. The trees need full sun.  The seeds were placed near woods' edges so that their branches would overhang mowed areas, making fruit collection easy.  I chose open areas or areas that would soon be open, such as areas with dead trees, etc.  Persimmons are choice wildlife food and are especial favorites of deer, opposums, and raccoons.  I planted around 20 or 30 seeds, finishing at dusk.  I walked home viewing one of God's gorgeous sunsets.  Life is good.