Finished throwing stuff out of my shed this afternoon...now it's all neat and tidy and practically every tin and basket is neatly labelled with the contents...
Biggest problem was fighting off the endless stream of drunken wasps...sozzled after eating windfall apples they seemed hell-bent on stinging me...settling stealthily on my leg or arm until I swiped them off and squashed them with the fly swatter.
I'm not allergic to the sting as such, but the site tends to swell alarmingly and takes forever to go down...remedies simply don't work...either old-fashioned vinegar or the over the counter sprays etc which guarantee to relieve the itching and swelling and do no such thing...end up going to the Doctor who tuts and prescribes anti-histamines and reminds me to watch out for the thin red line...
Haven't seen any of the Asian Hornets we've been warned about...for a while the news was full of scary stories about these giant creatures and a recent survey concluded that 17% of Irish people had actually seen one of the beasties...no-one asked if we'd seen them though.
Wasps are good chaps when they aren't in a stinging frame of mind...or drunk on ripe apples...they pollinate flowering plants just as well as bees do, but I swear a wasp stings because it thinks it's a bit of a laugh to see a human dancing about cursing, whereas bees only sting when
desperate...then they die. Probably why they don't sting for fun.
One of my Gt. Grandfathers died rather horribly when he ate cake that had a bee on it...it stung his throat as he swallowed and choked him when his throat swelled up.
Another Gt Grandfather kept bee-hives on the edge of the wood near his home...when he died, no-one told the bees and they flew away never to be seen again... leaving behind hives full of honey from the wild flowers.
Of course no-one deliberately keeps wasps, but sometimes their nests are found in attics or halfway up a chimney in a deserted cottage...the nest is made of paper...the wasps gather wood from fence posts and the like and chew it until it's a pulp. That pulp is used to build the nest...it looks and feels like strong brown paper though is actually really fragile.
Each compartment for a wasp larvae is a perfect hexagon...I've only seen one wasps nest...it was in Felicity's attic and the man who found it put it into a cardboard box to show her...it was truly a beautiful work of art. There were still some fat larvae left in their neat little cradles, though the wasps themselves had long gone.
Bumblebee! 
Your Alice Isn't My Alice...!
Tulip growing.
