Melinda and Rockwell found this little monster. The pictures just don’t do it justice, but we will try. This guys was flying and crawling up this tree holding a adult cicada.
We all were amazed at the size of it. “Melinda! Run and get the killing jar!”
I mounted it this evening. that is my fat index finger next to it. The picture does not do it justice. I have never seen such a big bee.(wasp) It turns out its called (obviously enough!) a Cicada killer! Its another one of those bees that the male does not sting.. sorta weird.
We have been renovating the front bedroom, bringing the ceiling back up to 11 feet. The plaster is in good condition, except where they knocked it out to put rafters for the false ceiling. You can see my patch now.. but it will disappear with paint. I had an interesting thing happen yesterday.. I went to the rental place for a panel jack to put the drywall on the ceiling. As I step up to the counter and ask if they have one the guys smiles and said “the guy in front of you just rented it”.Jeez. So just for fun, I said, hey, how many panels you have to put up? ’cause I only need it for 6.” and he said, hey, me too.. you want to share it?” heck yah.. he dropped it off in the afternoon, we both got what we needed to get done done, and save 20 bucks each.. Gotta love it!
As I am renovating, I came across one of the beams in the ceiling that is 6×6.. I noticed it had a mortise in it! That means it was recycled from an even older building!! (this house was built around 190X something.) That is something to think about! It reminded me of the barn that is being dismantled in Luke and Tammy’s back yard. (that is a sad story, BTW)
And, in the spirit of that, I am building a playhouse for the kids. so far, every piece of wood you see is salvaged from the bedroom renovation or salvaged from wood I found in the trash (the plywood floor) That is cool, huh?
I sorta stole the design out of a children’s book called “hedgies surprise“.
Except I made the roof 12-12, even though the picture looks like it is steeper than that even. . it will still be cool.
Also, I don’t know what happened, but I deleted the post where Melinda was manning a lemonade stand this summer during one of her mothers yard sales.. Kath helped them with the sign, but the kids really did paint it themselves!
