Pepe Le' Pew

 Another amazing day of weather yesterday had me running for the outdoors! Of course I did some stuff around the inside of the house, but honestly, when the weather is nice I "schedule" my work dependent on the weather. I.e. if it's nice, I try to do a lot of outside stuff, or just get outside for at least an hour to read or I'll take my computer or some art with me to work on. I leave non-essential indoor stuff for when the weather is bad. If I could, I would be outside though on nice days no matter what needed done inside, lol.

I was pulling dead leaves from my plants that have been inside all Winter and nearly grabbed this guy! European paper wasp. I let him be, he was just trying to lap up some moisture from the soil.

Once Woodchuck got home, we headed for the land, straight for the land, and decided against any other stops that we had been thinking about making on the way there. We had an important, time-sensitive task and I didn't want to mess that up and not get it done! As soon as we made the turn on the driveway that leads into the forest, he noticed our crow friends waiting for us! I am hoping to build on that relationship once we move out there!

We got our supplies together and headed for the pond! It was time to try something new for the water quality! You may remember from a previous post that I ordered this barley extract from TSC because it was WAY more affordable that the chemicals Woodchuck bought from a pond company, and those didn't work the first time and we couldn't afford to do it again. Plus, this is natural. We HAD to get this stuff in the pond because the water meal was already showing back up. Although it was nice and warm, it was windy, which made application a little tricky. 

I bought 3 gallons for our main pond, which holds about 215,000-217,000 gallons of water. If we like how this works, I'll buy some for the watershed pond this Fall. But why, oh why, did nobody talk about the smell?! I read a lot of reviews, all of them were good, but no mention of the scent of this? We opened the bottle and had to turn away really fast! Think fermented cooked broccoli, and a nasty baby poop after eating vegetables. No time to be a sissy about it though! Breath through the mouth and get going! 

Our sprayer holds 2 gallons, and in my head I divided the pond up into 3 sections and watched the sprayer level so that I would know when to move on to the next area. Unfortunately, since I was not willing to go in the Jon boat, it didn't get sprayed there, but the water meal seems to come from the edges anyway, and the most important bit was getting it where the flow of water starts so that can naturally carry the product out. The leaking side of the pond was an absolute adventure to try and traverse. I was carrying a heavy pump sprayer while trying not to fall in the water, was getting snagged with thorns, etc. My favorite kind of adventure, so this nature girl didn't mind too much! I ran across this cute little fellow, a wood frog, and we heard the first Spring peepers! We didn't hear any last year, so it was a welcome sound!

Once we sprayed the three gallons, we went for a quick walk to the watershed to grab a praying mantis ootheca that I had found on Monday and forgot out there. I also wanted to see if anyone had trespassed. We have the best views of the sun overhead from that place and it always makes me smile.

I ended up finding three oothecas! I knew the more round ones were the invasive Chinese mantis, but the other one stumped me and I thought it was a Carolina mantis. I asked in a bug group and was told that the two were indeed Chinese and the other was a European Mantis, which is also invasive. I didn't even know there was another invasive kind!!! Most talks I've seen are about the Chinese vs. the Carolina and I find identification picture and charts less than helpful for me. With the winds and storms we've had since leaving the land yesterday, I doubt it would be in the same spot I left it in (I removed the two Chinese ones), but I will look when we are out there again. Still so much to learn!!!