Friday, August 27, 2010

summer's sweet and simple pleasures ~ 9




~ Summer is for campfires and flying bats

Campfires and bonfires with cooking saves the kitchen from the chore of dreading making a hot meal at the end of the day.

As we had hoped for many of these such evenings here this year, to be honest it's been hit and miss for the most part.

Either the night air is filled with a cloud of bugs, especially mosquitoes nosediving down to bite my husband to bits (a blood magnet to be sure!), the humidity is sometimes too high or the forest fire needle has been raised a notch to signal concerns with the locals.


There have been a few successful nights, with soccer and bocce abounding nearby, many hotdogs, dozens of marshmallows and chocolate in between those graham wafers (s'mores). Oh, and guitar playing.

It fast becomes a ritual to be able to sit and just be still, enjoying the sounds and sights of the night, and even appreciating those bats flying about over our heads (here bat, bat, bat - come and eat all the mosquitoes please so they don't bug us!).




Oh my!

I forgot to tell you about the bat box I bought this spring, the one from a local carpenter I was going to hang out yonder in the hope it would attract bats to reside on our property and eat all of our bugs.

A local told me its the town secret after he seemed aghast at first;

"What do you mean, YOU don't have a bat house".


Okay, so I caught the enthusiastic possibilities of this natural riddance of more bugs yet.

Passing along the idea to my husband though, wasn't so good. He thought the bats would come and reside here alright, but then he thought they would want to come in for the winter, right into our attic or something, following the weasel and maybe all the mice we've had dining with us at breakfast.

So, he burst my bubble for the time being and the bat house is still sitting on the garage floor against the far wall. Poor lonely bat house.

No bats to fill it to eat the bugs.

Poor bats.

They would really enjoy our variety of bugs here, please stay and eat them all? :)
...to be continued...wink,wink.
(P.S. If you've had experience with bats, and bat houses, I'd love to hear from you.All it takes to get started is a few banana and orange peels. No upkeep after the little pushy push.)