A little rain!

We finally got a little rain overnight!  1/4 of an inch.  It was quite chilly today, one can tell summer is on it's way out.  The air is clean today.  No smoke here for the first time in weeks.  I have the wood stove going.  The heat from it feels good.  It was nice today to be outside with no yellow jackets around!

 A week ago last Saturday, I got stung right in the inner wrist on my blood vein by a yellow jacket.  The venom got main-lined into my bloodstream and I had an interesting reaction to it.  I was in the middle of doing chores, luckily I had finished with most and only had the dairy goats to feed and milk, and the eggs to gather.  After a couple of minutes, I started itching and burning like mad.  I went in the house and looked in the mirror and saw I was getting hives all over me!  I put some of my magic lotion on that, and it took care of the burning and itching.  Then I decided to soak my wrist in some Epsom salts to see if that would draw out the venom a bit.  As I was doing that, I all of a sudden got quite dizzy, the world started to fade around the edges.  I barely made it to the recliner, where I kicked back and either passed out or fell asleep for a bit.  I had a weird whooshing/ringing in my ears, too.  I sent up a prayer for the healing angels to come down and remove the toxin from me.  I checked in with muscle testing to see if I was dying.  It said I wasn't, that I would be better and able to milk the goats at the proper time, and that I would be fine by the time John got home.  Since I wasn't going to die, I decided to just deep dive into the experience and see what happened.  It was an interesting experience, for sure.  When I came to, I felt good enough to go milk, etc.  By the time John got home at 11 pm, I was feeling pretty much back to normal, except for my forearm was very swollen and itching like mad.  The hives were completely gone, couldn't even tell I had had them.  I think I was "out of it" for about 15 to 20 minutes.  The next day my arm was still really swollen, it looked deformed.  By Tuesday, it was back to normal and everything is good again.  I've been stung twice more since then with no reaction at all.  Those yellow jackets are mean little buggers!   All the traps, ammonia water, etc, is finally starting to noticeably thin out their numbers.  They still are plentiful around any water source, but are gradually getting out of the garden area.  The hum isn't nearly as loud as it was a month ago.  I also got stung by a Bald Faced hornet on the back of my neck.  Except for the initial sting, that got no reaction at all.  Not even very painful.  Seems every year we get some kind of pest/plague around here.  Last year it was rodents, this year buzzing beasts.  Deer have been plentiful in past years.  Stink bugs.  Always something.  At least it's only one kind at a time! 

The hay shed is torn down and the new section put up.  It looks so much better.  We have decided to add on one more section again for the ATV and trailers that go with it.  The hay bales need a bit longer space to fit in, so one end won't be out in the weather. 

The Hipcamp thing went well this year.  I think we are done for the year now.  We don't have any more bookings, and it's getting late enough in the year, that I doubt anyone will come now.  It was fun meeting all of them and visiting with them a bit.  All were very nice, and left clean campsites.  The extra income came in very handy, too!  And, if there hadn't been yet another fire in Glacier Park that closed down the west side, we might have had one or two more campers.  Oh well.  Hope next year there aren't any fires anywhere!

Well, back to needle felting 12 little bears for an order I got.  I'm almost done with the 4th one, so I will finish that tonight, and work again on them tomorrow.