Let There Be Light

Micah:  Do you think Jan is going to make it through the summer?

Rusty:  I hope so.  Why do you ask?

Micah:  Well, if she is supposed to be ancient, why is she working so hard in this weather?  Heat and humidity mean it's time for extra naps but she's been doing extra work.  Is she backwards or what? 

Rusty:  Definitely backwards!  But we've had so much rain everything is growing like weeds and she can't keep up.  Remember this tree limb? (Sawing Branch as Percy Turns 14) She sawed it off on Sunday and fortunately, got some help cutting it up or she wouldn't have been able to open our canned food this week.

Micah:  It did help to let some sunshine in the side yard so the grass won't die. But it wasn't enough.  So Tuesday, she looked and found the limb on the neighbor's tree she cut over our property last year had branched out and grown over our yard again.

Rusty:  So Jan cut it?

Micah:  Um, not exactly.  She couldn't reach it with the saw on a pole, so she used a "grabber" for disabled people to pick up things, grabbed and pulled the end of the branch, leaned her weight on it until it started to crack, twisted it round and round, back and forth, leaned on it a few more times and finally it broke off!

Rusty:  That's what it gets for growing over our yard and blocking sunlight, but that sure is a strange way to take down a branch.

Micah:  Yes, but you know Jan often has a strange way of accomplishing things.  This was a smaller-sized branch and Jan was able to cut this one up by herself.

Rusty:  And then Wednesday morning she got a shock!  Our neighbor has refused to cut his bushes.  Our phone and power lines run through them.  They also block sunlight from our pen.

Micah:  I remember this is what it looked like over there last year.  With all the rain we've had, those bushes grew higher than the pole where the lines are attached.  Between our tree, their tree and their jungle, it's been a bit dark and claustrophobic over here.

Rusty:  Jan practically did a dance when those two guys showed up to trim the bushes next door. When they left, our power and phone lines had been liberated and there is now a small path for sunlight to the dog pen.

Micah:  Do you think Jan was serious when she said she could kiss the neighbor's landlord for sending those guys over to do the trimming on their property?

Rusty:  No, you know how humans are always saying things they don't mean.

Micah:  Unlike us.  We always mean what we say.

Rusty:  By the way, you promised to repay the two dollars you borrowed last week.

Micah:  And I will.  Just as soon as my ship comes in. 

Cyndi:  It's been a few months since we Funny Farmer Felines last posted a Mousebreath interview.  Today we feature the Hipster Kitties from Dennis the Vizsla's blog.  Many of you know them.  The little black and white cats and the big red one with the white face.  What do you mean the big one is an imposter?  Are you sure?

Percy:  Stop by Mousebreath to read their interview, Hipster Kitties Charlee and Chaplin  … and Dennis.

See Ya Thursday

Merci:  Excuse my back but I don't have the energy to get up and turn around.  This heat and humidity has been a bit much for us old fogies.  And it didn't help that Jan spent yesterday trimming bushes and cleaning up the mess.  It was exhausting just to watch!!!!

Hopefully, Jan will behave herself and stop working in the yard so we can recover.  We didn't get a post up yesterday and we're going to take a couple more days off.  We plan to be back Thursday.

Percy:  Wait, don't hit publish yet, Merci.  I want to thank Pipo, Mr. Jack Freckles and their Petcretary for the lovely card they made for my birthday Sunday.

What do you think we should do with our time off, Merci?

Merci:  Zzzzzzzz.

Short and Thin

Taylor:   We are hoping Jan has learned her lesson about attacking - even accidentally - a stinging insect (Flat Black Flying Insect), but she's so absent-minded, she probably hasn't.

Buddy:  It was a fun eight days watching her carefully poke sticks and clippers into the bushes to figure out where its friends and family were hiding.

Taylor:  After church the next day, she did a little trimming in the rain. Clip, clip, here they come, move away.  Okay, it's safe.  Clip, clip, here they come, move away.   By day three she had made the mess in the photo above. 

Buddy:  This is a view of the side of the house.  Weeds and thistles were entangled in the bushes and some were already growing under the siding.

Taylor:  It took her eight days, but she worked her way through all the bushes and then went back to cut them a second, then a third time so they were all short and thinned.

Buddy:  This is the end result of the side of the house.

Taylor:  And this is the front.  Notice the one trimmed down to the stalks and thinned to half the original size. 

Buddy:  It took five days of careful trimming to find what was being built in that bush.  Can you see it?  (Click o the pic to enlarge it.)  This is a close-up from the only angle it's visible.

Taylor:  And this is what the wasp nest looked like the morning after Jan sprayed it and it fell down. 

Buddy:  We're thankful to be rid of those wasps.  Jan was afraid one of us dogs would be stung since we like to water those bushes as we begin our walks.

Taylor: Sorry we don't have any jokes for you today.  Jan can be crabby when she's in pain and that sometimes affects our sense of humor.   But we'll find it again if she didn't throw it out with the shrub trimmings.


We're joining Pepi Smart Dog for today's Thankful Thursday blog hop.

Marcus Two-Step

Micah:  Is it true what I heard about Marcus honking again?

Marcus.

Buddy:  It depends on what you heard.  If you heard he was communicating with geese again, that's sort of true.

Micah:  How can it be "sort of" true?

Buddy:  Well, Marcus sort of thinks he was communicating with geese again.   I couldn't attest that either species was on the same honking dialect.  In fact, I am pretty certain they weren't.

Micah: How can you be sure?

Buddy:  As we walked closer, the geese backed up and began to two-step to our left.

Micah:  So why did Marcus come home so proud of himself?

Buddy:  He thinks he taught them to dance.


PS:  Regarding yesterday's post - Flat Black Flying Insect -  where Jan was stung by the mystery insect.  (She only saw it squashed for a second.)  She tried to cut the same bushes in the rain yesterday, hoping things would be uneventful.  Before long, there were insects flying around, so she retreated.

She really wants to find out where they are hiding, so when it rained a little harder, she thought she would try again.  They came out again.  She came in the house to get her reading glasses.  Wearing them, she was able to stand on the porch and locate one upside down through an opening in the bush.  W- A - S - P!

We've had wasps flying around "on" our porch for years.  Never found where they came from and they never bothered us.  Wasps in the bushes is something new.  These didn't actually bother Jan either.  She researched over the weekend and found wasps can build a nest in a bush and be highly aggressive to someone just walking by.  But there is no nest in these bushes!

Wonder what kind of wasps these could be?  She accidentally "attacked" the wasp that stung her, not the other way around, and so far they haven't bothered her, but Jan is terrified they won't take kindly to repeated disturbances.   Those bushes have got to be trimmed!  Any safe advice?

Flat Black Flying Insect

Cyndi:  Do you remember the bushes around the house that have grown wild this summer?  (Click to read Seven Dollars and Change.)   Jan finally started on the three in the front Saturday.  She started cutting out the growth that doesn't belong.  One part was twisted among the bush, so she grabbed it and yanked hard to the left.  Then SCREAMED!  Yep, two snips, one yank and she was finished pruning.

Merci:  You have to tell the whole truth, Cyndi.  Jan stopped because she was stung.

Cyndi:  By what?

Merci:  That's what Jan would like to know.  There was what could have been a flattened black flying insect plastered against her arm.  And there were suddenly three or four black unknowns insects flying around the area she'd been working.  They didn't attack her and they might have had nothing to do with what happened.

Cyndi:  A wasp?

Merci:  That was Jan's first thought since we usually have wasps flying around the front, but it looked more black than brown or red and it was a bit hard to identify a flat bug with one terrified glance.  Not that she stopped to study it!  And she couldn't find a body when she went back to look.  But it gave her a good scare!.

Cyndi:  And a sore arm.  Ice took down the swelling and closed over the hole.  But now she's wondering if there's still a stinger in there.  On the other hand, she sure hopes it wasn't a spider!

Merci:  What's so funny, Cyndi?

Cyndi:  I'm just thinking about that poor bug minding it's own business and suddenly ... ouch!

Merci:  You'd better wipe the smile off your face before you go in to dinner.  That's what happened to Jan.
  
P. S. by Cyndi:  By the way, try saying the title of this post rapidly three times.

Butterflies

Micah:  Hey, Taylor, what do you call a butterfly in our yard?

Taylor:  I don't know.  What?

Micah:  Well, evidently if you're Marcus, you call it "Snack"!

Marcus:  That's not true!

Buddy:  It certainly is.  You think anything flying is edible.  One day you're going to swallow a wasp.

Marcus:  You must be referring to Tuesday afternoon when we returned from walking Jan and that black butterfly was flitting about in the bushes so temptingly just out of my reach.

Buddy:  Yes, I am.  Jan had a time trying to get her camera out of the case, hang on to us with one hand and try to follow the butterfly from perch to perch to get just one picture while you leaped with joy over the anticipation.

Micah:  Why didn't Jan just yell at Marcus to stop misbehaving?

Taylor:  I can guess.  Because that would have scared the butterfly away.  But wait, why didn't Marcus scare it away with his gymnastics?

Buddy:  Perhaps because Marcus never made a sound - for once. We can sure be thankful for that!  And that he didn't actually catch the butterfly.

Taylor:  So why does Jan have two photos of a white butterfly on our bushes?

Marcus:  I can't be blamed for the quality of pictures Wednesday because I was good.  Very, very good!

Micah:  I guess this is the first time this butterfly has done any posing for the camera.  An experienced butterfly would have picked a contrasting background so it doesn't blend into the tree ... er, the scenery.

Buddy:   Hey, did any of you notice what is missing in these pictures?

Taylor:  No.

Buddy:  Marcus!  No eyes, no ears, no Marcus.

Marcus:  What was Jan thinking!


We're joining Pepi Smart Dog for today's Thankful Thursday blog hop.

Seven Dollars and Change

Micah:  We've been very busy for a while snoopervising Jan, so please forgive us if we haven't been able to leave comments as often as we would like.  She is way behind in everything.

Merci:   Evidently humans creak and groan and yelp and crackle when they get old and have to prune trees and cut parts of a lawn by hand.

Micah:  She's finally recovering but the yard is on steroids and she is constantly having to swing a grass whip.  You wouldn't believe it to look at the lawn, though. 

Merci:  Our bushes haven't been cut back yet this year.  There are all kinds of things growing among them and they're riddled with those horrible vines with thorns. 

Micah:  All this has to be cut back from the house. She tried to tear out some of the thorns the other night and injured her leg on a pipe hidden by overgrowth. 

Merci:  To give Jan incentive, Marcus suggested we hide a hundred dollar bill in the bushes, but we checked Jan's wallet and she doesn't have one we can steal ... er, borrow.  Cyndi said two ones and a five wouldn't have the same attraction.

Micah:  What about change?  Did she have any change in her wallet?

Merci:  Yes, thirty-seven cents. 

Micah:  How much encouragement do you think we could provide her with for seven dollars and thirty-seven cents?

Merci:  We might encourage her to remember where she keeps the tools.

Micah:  Well, that's a start.  Where did she put her purse?

Merci:  You do realize we would be robbing Jan to pay Jan, don't you?

Micah:  Of course.  I read somewhere  that's how high finance works.