Summertime in the Great Outdoors.

It's summertime. That means the windows are open at my house; getting the fresh air in and (hopefully) getting cool breezes.  I'm outside on my patio as much as possible, taking advantage of my new space. Of course that's been hard since it's been either so hot that you can’t move a fingernail without massive sweating or so chilly and damp that you don’t even want to leave the house or everything inside the house is damp due to the humidity.  With all that said, summer is for me about the great outdoors.

 Sometimes the great outdoors actually makes its way in. An example of this is frequently it smelled in my home early (really early) in the morning. You know what I'm talking about!  It's that lovely scent of skunk!

  I don't know what's going on in my backyard or my neighbor's backyard or the people across the street or the people down the block, but there is a skunk. A skunk likes to spray.  (Or at least it seems that way.)  I'm not sure what the heck is scaring that skunk enough to make it spray so frequently, but it's out there!  And if the scent is any indication, it's REALLY scared. It's spraying with all its might. The lovely odor fills my house in the morning around 2:00, 3:00, or 4:00.  It's not an everyday occurrence, but it is pretty darn frequent.  Frequent enough to make me wake up and go "ugh not again." 

 This week alone it's happened twice. The whole scent just fills the upstairs. I don't know how it does it but it does. Even when I have the air conditioning unit on in my bedroom and the door closed, the scent seeps through the vents and under the door.  I awaken my nose twitching with that scent. 

 At least it's not as bad as several years back when I smelled something horrible as I went out for my morning walk but figured that by the time I got back the scent would dissipate. After all skunk sent can't last forever in the air can it? However when I came back an hour or so later the smell was still there and that's when I realized that there was something in the lower part of my driveway by the garage. You don't have to guess what it was. It was a poor dead skunk. I'm still not exactly sure what happened to it. My guess is that it had climbed up into a nearby tree and perhaps fell into its death.  (The only reason I think this is because there was a tree close to the location of the "body".) What do you do with a dead skunk when it's your property? (If it's not on your property, you can call the town/county have it removed, but if it's in your driveway...)  If you're me, you ask/beg your husband to take care of it. Luckily enough mine did. He went outside with two garbage bags.  He pulled one inside out and grabbed the carcass with it while wearing gloves. He pulled it in the bag and then double bagged it and that was the end of it.  What a fun task for morning!

 However, skunks are the only thing that are visiting my neighborhood. You may have heard about the cicadas coming back this summer. Although I see them (and hear them) every year, apparently every 17 years they REALLY come out. So they say. Although the cicada news has been around for a while I didn't start hearing them until mid-July. When you hear that sound, you know they are around.  You can't miss them they are loud. Very, very LOUD. Between them and the birds and the crickets...well it's a lot of early morning noise.

  Although I hear their loud noise throughout the day I really haven't seen that many. Or at least I haven't seen that many YET. What I have started to see are our favorite insects it's a cicada killer wasps. No surprise there with a proliferation of cicadas there should be even more wasps. So far I haven't seen that many. (Fingers crossed that it stays that way.) I always find them around my front lawn. They fly aggressively even though they don't really bother me. (Well, maybe they do.)  They are gross. They are disgusting.  And I can't figure out why they are obsessed with my front lawn. (Why not someone else's lawn?)  Especially since I have such a large backyard with plenty of spaces for them to dig their little holes/nests for their young to feed on the cicadas they bring in.  But no they like to stay in the front.

 Maybe they are afraid of the backyard. Maybe they are afraid of Spragg? You remember Spragg don't you? I wrote about Spragg last year:  https://bfthsboringblog.blogspot.com/2020/08/spragg.html

 I didn't know if Spragg would make it through the winter.   I'd says it was touch and go in the early spring. There was less green and more brown dirt.

However after a warm and wet spring and summer, I am happy to say that Spragg is blooming in all its glory. Why shouldn't it? Don't all weeds, even jimson weed, love to spread out and grow? Yes, there are more of other types of invasive weeds but this member of the deadly nightshade family is still going strong. That mound of dirt has grown and grown and GROWN.  You can barely see the green tarp that was laid down by the dirt. (Like you could in the early spring)  Spragg has overcome the table umbrella that was left to rot down behind it. Spragg is ALIVE and growing stronger every day.

 

Maybe that's why there are no cicada killer wasps in the back area. Maybe that's why the skunks are so scared. Maybe in the early morning hours Spragg starts to creep out and up. Terrorizing all the critters that live in the grassy backyard. The deer, the birds (including the hawks that circle), the bunnies; they all avoid Spragg.  I'm guessing so does the skunk. Poor terrorized animal that runs away spraying its lovely scent right by my house as it flees.