jdmidwest

I have zucchini plants that are chest high and have the best foliage ever, but have never set a squash all summer. My third planting of okra has finally produced its first fruit. It is about a foot tall and made 2 piece of okra. My third planting of green beans are up and looking good. My zinnias, sunflowers, and wildflowers I planted amounted to nothing. I have no flowers. Cucumbers produced about 1 cuc a week and now have yellow blotches and are dying. Peppers are sickly and frail. Don't expect much there. Tomatoes did alright. Too wet and cold at start, then too dry and hot, now too wet again. If I was living off the land this year, I would be robbing the neighbors.

Ancient Kings built temples, pyramids, and other monuments to themselves. Missouri has really overdone it on this one. Some of the best concrete roads in the state. State of the art architecture and design. A luxury bridge over a small crick. Huge lodge with meeting rooms and dining facility. Condos. RV sites packed in side to side out in the open. Thanks to a feller that had one party too many, Mo has built some park. Why did they put guard rails along the road that are already rusting on opening week? Most everywhere uses galvanized material that resists the elements. Were they trying to make it look "rustic"? I have a pic of an overlook where they used 3" square steel with a powdercoat inner grate. The steel tube is rusting already, I warned the better half not to lean on it. Why didn't they finish the metal? Overall, I was ashamed that someone spent so much money, my tax dollars and yours, on something so fickle. They really overdid it. And there is only a little crick running thru it.

I never seem to find a bright enough spotlight when running to the duck blind in the morning. Fog always seems to eat the beam.

Thanks for bringing the foamy gray mess back up. I think the smell still lingers in my nose hairs from Thurs. still.

Just got it this spring.

The bugs had it melted down to a few bones. I cleaned the live well with soapy water, but it still stinks like butt. Baking soda soak did nothing last night. Bleach maybe? I do have some orange cleaner to dump in there. It does not need scrubbed and there was no stain. Just a smell. Nice wet hot humid afternoon today, the smell really permeates everything. Just another good reason for catch and release.

Any idea how to get the smell out? Other livewell was used as beer can collector. Smells like cat pissed in that one. I am thinking bleach. I dumped baking soda in for now.

A buddy and I went fishing a week ago Sunday at a local lake. It was hot. We anchored up the boat under some trees with a good point dropoff in front of us. Fishing with chicken livers, we caught 7 nice 3-5 lb channel cat. It started heating up and we pulled off the lake. I went home with the catch in the livewells to clean fish. We had a great mess of catfish for supper. Last Thurs, while loading up the kayaks for a Spring River trip, I smelled something foul. At first I just thought it was the trash cans. Better half makes a statement, "it smells like it is in the boat". I lifted the cover and raised the seat over the back livewell and was greeted by an awful smell, flies, and a mess. When I was taking the fish out of the livewells, there was still a lively one that resisted being caught in that livewell. I decided to let it drain out and went to the front livewell to get the ones in that one. With the heat bearing down on me, I forget to go back and get the one in the back. I let it ripen until today, I had to clean it out before this weekend. It has melted down to a gray runny mess with maggots and some bones. I puked twice while I run water trying to flush out the mess. Used a pair of dollar store grabbers to get the bones out and tossed them. Flushed with detergent and dumped a box of baking soda in to get rid of the smell. YUK

The story I read, it was a protest move because Nixon withheld funding to the Public Defender Program. Since Nixon was a former Attorney General, he was the obvious first pick. He is to be tasked to defend a felony thief I believe, but his name is being withheld from the public. I really don't see any problem, Nixon is a public servant with a law license. He should just serve his time like anyone else.

There may not be a business for sale, just some used equipment. Lost another hive this weekend. I noticed it was being robbed on Thursday as I was packing for the weekend. Completely destroyed today when I got home. I guess I will tear it apart tomorrow if no rain and see what went wrong with it. This sets me back to where I was 2 years ago. Looks like a bleak winter coming. I have lost 10 hives since last fall. Replacement cost of a hive of bees runs about $150 each currently. Nice little loss, its a shame I have only sold about $100 in honey in the last 2 years. Good thing I really don't bother keeping records, that would really get depressing. I spent $400 on new hive equipment expecting growth this spring. Its still sitting in boxes. Last years expenses were over $1500 with the hive materials and extractor. Of course labor is always free.

Kinda pricey for only 156 acres. On top of that, public stream running thru it with all of those people. I would go for something more remote.

Call the company that made it, they will probably have the material to repair. My roto molded Wilderness System cracked one time. Company sent me a piece of plastic that looked like weedeater string and I used a heat gun to weld it in place. Depending on the type of kayak, there may be many options to repair. Plastic weld, JB weld are materials available at any auto part store.

Hen mallard decoys make good magnum teal decoys. But you can find teal decoys pretty cheap. I use both. Open water is usually early morning hunt if passing thru on migration. If hunting refuge area, you may have all day or evening hunt. Usually you get early flocks, shoot them, and the keep moving south. Rarely do you find a good flight day where the last very long into morning.

Last night at a beekeepers meeting, one member said to coat the feeder part with veggie oil to keep honeybees off of it. Since I started keeping bees, I could not keep feeders out because of bees crowding it out. I am gonna try it. I miss my hummers. I had a white one at one time.

Sucks to run out of gas. Better half called on a Friday a few months back, broke down on a turn lane on a busy highway in 5'oclock traffic. First thing I asked, when was the last time you filled up? 4 Runners don't just die like that. Grabbed a gas can and prepared to hunker down to keep from getting hit. Luckly, local PD was on scene and blocking traffic for me while I poured a gallon of gas in and got her going. It's not that 4 Runners are perfect, their gas gauge sucks. There is something hinky with the attitude adjustment on the thing, it does not register correctly. They tried to build in a feature that reads on inclines and other angles. It does not work right, should just have a regular float.

Another for the Navy. You can never have too many boats.

Look up, you probably have a hive in a tree or your house. What you are seeing is dead bees being carried out of a hive.

They have spent alot of money to clean things up since the 80's at both locations. One was a weapons dump with radioactive material and the other mined heavy metals. Both have histories of nasty stuff.

I fish out of the ultimate jet boat rig. We came about it by accident. My friend bought a 80's model Tracker Panfish Pro and had someone build up the transom and add a jet to the 25 hp Johnson. Its stick steer in the front, has sideboards running down both sides that you can walk around on, and a fairly open interior. Middle seat that used to be a livewell, now storage. You can fish three comfortably. It has been upgraded to a true 25hp Merc 4 stroke with power trim. Its just wide enough to be stable, but narrow enough to thread it thru a rootwad. The front stick steer is like piloting a plane up the river, sitting in the front you can see well and glide the boat like a plane. Easy to fish alone if needed. Not fast, but a good fishing boat. It could use a thicker hull, we have had several adventures that the hull has been opened by a rock. My next boat will be of similar design, but keeping with the 25 hp to run the 11 PT River. The new jet motors that are rated for 25 hp at the jet are plenty fast enough to get the job done. And you can run them anywhere there are restrictions. Unless you are on a 10 hp limit lake.

I never did. They were lead mine lakes. I really don't know if there is any toxic stuff in the lakes, but it is likely. Then there was the constant noise from all of the 4 wheeler's that kept me out. I have not looked at them since I was up there in the 90's. I did fish the Busch Wildlife lakes in the 80's but never kept a fish. Lots of toxic stuff in the ground around there too. It used to tarnish the blades on the spinners of the grubs I was using to fish with.

Yeah, a convert. The Bees for Dummies is a good book, I have read it in pdf. Lots of others online to read too. Find a local bee club and attend a few meetings. Queen excluders are worthless in my opinion. I never have any brood in my supers when I run 2 deeps. I added a third deep this year to the one I just tossed around because it was my only 10 frame hive and did not have another 10 frame super. I did have some brood in the 3rd deep and the bottom box was empty with small hive beetles running around in it yesterday. I don't use them. They are in the pile of stuff I don't use. Check your brood pattern in the weaker hive and make sure the queen is laying good. They will probably be fine, hives all have their own personalities. Don't give them more boxes than they can fill and protect. If you have the dearth like we have had lately, they are actually using honey now, not storing it. Its a fun hobby. Always wear a suit or keep a veil on. Face stings are the worst. My foot still bothers me from last summer's sting thru the croc I took one morning.

I went back down to the hives today after work to clean up my mess. I was picking up the frames and boxes I had scattered around and found a big wad of bees on the box I had kicked off the stand. I opened the top of the hive and gave the box a good shake, dropping a wad of bees that would fill a gallon jug. I guess the queen was in the wad of bees. She must have run in the hole in the inner cover and the rest started following her in like the pied piper. Back to 6 hives now at the house.

Bee in the ear sucks. even worse if they get in and buzz around for a while before they sting. Herbicides should not be a problem, pesticides do. Many things cause them to die.

I had my doubts when I picked them and took them into the office for the mushroom expert. I was busy that night and did not even bother to look them over close. But I was not going to eat one till I knew for sure. The gills and the stem had me wondering. But the trumpet shape added to the confusion. Most chanterelles I had seen were tender and a lighter mushroom. These had a tough outer skin. I searched long and hard today and really can't tell what they are.

Suited up this afternoon in the nice warm weather to make the splits. I started taking a hive apart frame by frame and parting it out. Got down to the second box and found that this hive may be without a queen or she quit laying due to the dry spell last month. At that time, making new splits came to an end, I need eggs to make new queens. And by this time the bees were boiling out of what was left of the hive and the boxes all around me. And I was sweating in the heat. I put things back together and picked up some of my mess. I left alot of bees scattered around on the extra hives and frames I had pulled out. Knowing my luck, the queen is probably on the ground down there somewhere in all of that confusion. But they were pretty worked up and I started smelling bananas. That is the alarm bell phermone they release when they really get angry. First time I smelled that this year. But third time in without any stings. Back to drawing board. Probably down to 5 hives now. I guess I will just have to buy some queens and do splits that way. I have just been trying not to introduce any foreign bees into the hives that may be carrying things that mine do not have. The hives have been pretty pure, they have been created from the original 3 hives I started with and whatever local bees that the queens may have mated with. But it may be time to bring in some new genetics. I have not been impressed the past year with their performance.