Restoring Irving Gill's "Williams House"

Bee Balooza: Pass the Gill Paneling, Pass the Honey

“I’d rather get my foreskin stuck in my zipper than mess with those bees,” he said as we told him of our winter plans.

Most people call an exterminator when bees decide to nest in a bedroom wall.

The good news is that the bees have found the guest house rather than the main house. “The Little House” is a small one-bedroom home of about 800 square feet that was originally built as a servants quarters. Its original footprint was closer to 500 square feet.

The bees have located themselves right behind some of the only original paneling on the property. The hive is approximately three feet square (or round).

“Call an exterminator,” said the County Ag Extension Office.

“But aren’t these insects endangered? They are pollinating our orchard. They also may be rich enough in vitamins and minerals to be depression buster foods.  Do we really want to kill them?”

My mom is in charge of this particular project and she tells me that there are ways to lure a hive into a new hive. Apparently you can smoke them out as well. They will fly out of the hive, mad as hell, and scatter to the winds.

We hatched a plan the other night over beer that will likely peak in about January. That is, of course, unless we decide to call an exterminator.

Mom claims that when the honey is low in December we can hang a hive full of honey on the eaves near where the bees are entering the house. The Little House Bees will appreciate the new digs hanging on the eaves and slowly move into the new location. A few bees, in their attachment to the Little House hive, will remain in the wall. It’s those bees that we will need to worry about. 

That’s where the smoke comes in.

 
“Well, the wood stove isn’t drawing well, we could just start a fire in the stove and smoke up the whole house.”

 
That was my idea but the likelihood of a house fire is apparently reason not to take that route.

 
“A house fire would get rid of the bees.”

 
We have a Plan B going to create smoke and channel it into the wall. It’s one of those plans that probably deserves a few more nights of sleep before making it public.

It was somewhere in recounting the plan that the zipper comment came in.

Comments, advice, zipper quotes welcome. :)

And behold, all things are made new

For the last few months, we have had a disaster area here.  I am not sure what has been worse -- the inside or the outside.  Weeds have a way of continuing to grow if you don't get around to chopping them.  When you do chop them, new weeds grow and you get to chop again.  And it's the same with the pernicious perennials -- what got trimmed in the spring is out of control again by August.  And then of course, there's what you forgot to trim in the spring....

Happy Birthday Sander, Happy Birthday America

July 4, 2005 

We celebrated Sander’s birthday today by getting a lot of work done around the house.  We had the help of Adonay and Jessica who do work for us periodically.  Jessica watched Frederick, freeing us up to work.  Sander began his birthday cutting grass past the driveway.  I painted the second color coat on a pair of dressers for our bedroom.  Adonay worked at lining the lower part of a garden fence with chicken wire to keep rabbits and squirrels out.  At 9 a.m. we all came in for some birthday biscuits.  Biscuits are such a treat around here; these were the first since Christmas. 

Here's Sander celebrating his birthday:

I’m not as young as I used to be

June 25, 2005

The plan for today was to unload the truck and fill it up for a dump run before returning it to Bakersfield this evening.  We’re beat. 

This morning Sander and I unloaded the settee, dryer, wheelbarrow, and a filing cabinet from the moving truck.  We left the refrigerator, freezer, and stove in the truck protected, and filled the rest of the truck for our dump run.  We had accumulated rubble since late March for this dump run – old pipes from our woodstoves, treasures from the clearing out of the workshop, remains of the old burn barrel.  It took well over an hour to load the truck and at least a half hour to unload it at the dump.  I need to get in better shape if I am going to be doing this kind of work.

Burn Barrel archeology

June 7, 2005

In a continued effort to clean the front area of the house, I tackled the old burn barrel.  This barrel was over flowing with trash and I had no idea what I might find.  It was rusted and rotten through the middle so I assumed that the bottom was also rotten (and I assumed correctly).  I scooped trash out of the barrel with a shovel.  After the first layer of trash, I hit a colony of tiny ants and continued to slap ants off of my forearms.  About ¼ of the way down I found a Pepsi can from the spring of 2002 – it had characters from Star Wars episode 1.  About ½ of the way down I found the label of an onion or garlic bag with an expiration date of March 1996.  Nothing else was recognizable; most looked like rich compost, however, I did not add it to the compost pile.

And the burn barrel made it to the dump pile at last:

Workshop cleaning

June 5, 2005

Today Sander and I began to clean out and organize the workshop.  When we moved in one year ago, my dad’s tools and treasures were still in the workshop, some areas fairly well organized, others in varying states of disorganization.  When we added our own tools and equipment, the workshop became an absolute mess.  We lived that way for a year.  After a day of work, you can see some of the table surfaces and we have added significantly to our dump pile. 

Salvage from the workshop: