Driving on sunshine!

Solar panels + electric vehicle = emission free commute to work!

I have had a deep commitment to ecology and conservation for a long time. I was both alive and sentient on the first Earth Day in 1970. Two months shy of my 11^th birthday, I was at an impressionable age. My parents had sent us to day camps at the Kalamazoo Nature Center during the summer, and I took to it. When I was old enough—13 sticks in my mind—I worked as a junior counselor and continued to spend my summers there for most of the years up until I was 20. I have had a long association with tree huggers.

In recent years, I have gone all in for raising my own food, making my own yogurt, baking my own bread, mulching my kitchen scraps, reducing, reusing, recycling, and otherwise trying to leave the smallest possible carbon footprint. And I was well aware of my Great Hypocrisy—I burned through almost two gallons of gas a day just getting back and forth to work. Hybrids had just come on the market 10 years ago when it was time for me to buy a new car, but there were two problems. First, they didn’t have all wheel drive, which I needed when we lived at the Girl Scout camp. Secondly, my Subaru’s transmission was about to go, and there was a 6-month wait for a Prius. I bought a Toyota Matrix instead. It got 30 mpg, which was pretty good. You will always take a hit on mileage with all-wheel drive. I rationalized the emissions by remembering that Terry didn’t commute at all. Still, it rankled.

At first, I was skeptical of electric cars. It seemed like a simple displacement of CO₂ from the car itself to the generating plant. A few years ago, Terry and I watched a program on electric cars. I learned that the amount of fuel used to make electricity was less than the comparable amount of gas to power a regular car. One of the last statements on the program struck me—the longer you have an electric car, the cleaner it will become. But there were still problems. I drive 26 miles to work. The early electric cars had ranges that would not get me back home. I worried about getting stranded with a dead battery. The Chevy Volt had a certain appeal with the gas backup, but the range was still well under my round-trip commute. And I wasn’t ready to get a new car.

The first Volt stood the test of time. The reviews were good. The reviews for the 2016 Volt were even better. I thought I could get along without all-wheel drive if my parents were willing to let me drive their Subaru when the weather was terrible. They readily agreed that they had no business on bad roads at their age. Also, we live on the milk truck route now, and the road gets plowed early. I was ready.

Alas, the 2016 Volt was not available in Illinois. I would have to wait for the 2017 Volt, which was supposed to be available “in early summer.” I left my phone number at the Chevy dealers in Woodstock and Crystal Lake. They would be happy to order one for me. I didn’t want to order until I had driven one. They promised to call as soon as they got one in. And I waited.

Meanwhile, MCC installed two charging stations in the parking lot with reserved parking for electronic vehicles (EV). On April 28, Nissan representatives brought a Leaf to MCC for test drives. I was in class, so I missed it. The buzz after the fact was extreme. So fun to drive! So affordable! Range of 107 miles in optimal conditions! Tax credits! Educator discounts! When I mentioned to one of my co-workers that I didn’t think I could get home from Elgin after visiting Jane, he wisely suggested that I could plug in at her house while I visited.

Thinking that I would never, ever be able to get a Volt, I did some searching on the Web for Leafs (Leaves?) and found a dealer in St. Charles. I scheduled an appointment for 1:30 on Friday, May 6. Maybe I could make it work. I could rent a car if I went on a road trip. Kate (who went to the test drive on campus) said that there was a “quick charge” feature that took 15 minutes. Jane researched charging stations, which are few and far between around here. She also told me that the home charging station Nissan recommended was $1000 DIY, $2000 if professionally installed. I looked up the distance to Jane’s house and found it to be 45 miles. Would the Leaf make 90 miles if you also ran the heater or air conditioner?

I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment in Elgin on the day of the Leaf test drive when she called me. “There are 5 Volts at a dealer in Glendale Heights and one at Biggers in Elgin.”

“Glendale Heights?” I asked. “Isn’t that where Jesus left his shoes?”

“It’s not that far,” she replied. “It is on the same road as the Nissan dealer in St. Charles.”

I was done at the doctor’s office in record time. I called Jane to tell her to start cooking lunch. We ate as soon as I got to her house. It was 11:30 when I started calling Chevy dealers. Biggers had sold their only Volt the previous day. Sunrise Chevy in Glendale Heights would be happy to have me test drive one. I said we’d be there at 12:30. We took Jane’s car just to ensure that I wouldn’t impulsively buy a car that day.

We met Craig, a very nice young man who was Sunrise’s Volt specialist. I drove the car. I loved it. It was the car I had researched and dreamed of owning. But I still felt I should keep my appointment at Nissan. At 1:10, we told Craig we had to leave, but we’d be back.

The woman at the Nissan dealer was not very eager to sell me a Leaf. I told her right off the bat that I lived in the country and was nervous about being all electric. From that moment, she was trying to sell me the Jute, which was “comparable to the Matrix.” She also told me that there was no mechanism for charging the car from a regular 120V outlet. I would have to install a charging station before bringing the car home and have no mechanism for charging at Jane’s house.

I took a brochure and the woman’s card just to be polite. We went back to Sunrise and gave Craig $1000 to find me a red car with heated seats. So much has changed since I last bought a car. I had saved up a lot of money in anticipation of having to pay for a package of things I didn’t want to get one thing I did want, sort of like buying boxes of stuff at an auction. When I bought the Matrix, I got a moon roof and 6-CD player that I didn’t care about so I could get the all-wheel drive that was essential. But all I needed to pay for this time was the heated seats and the red color (which was $395—if it had been $2000, I would have had to think about it more). Plus, the salesmen at Sunrise don’t work on commissions, so it was all very low key. Craig found three cars that met my criteria. The car would in in Monday or Tuesday.

Craig called Tuesday to say I could pick up the car Wednesday. I took off from school as soon as I had the final exam grades posted. I picked up Jane and got to the dealer at 2:30. I surrendered all three keys to my Matrix with more than a little sadness. It was 10 years old and had 164,000+ miles. I am certain it had 200,000 miles in it. It was a great little car. Never gave me a moment’s trouble. It was hard to let it go. I hope that someone will love it as I have loved it until it gives out. Also, it was really a good red, which could not be said of the Volt. The “Siren Red” had looked redder on the website. In reality it was more of a maroon. I’ll get used to it.

Farewell, little Matrix. Such a good car, such a good red

It took an hour and 45 minutes to sign the papers and write the big check. Unlike the big checks I wrote for the solar panels, this big check was my own money. Paying cash for a car made me feel like such a successful grown up.

Despite Jane’s statement to the contrary, Glendale Heights is indeed where Jesus left his shoes, at least relative to where I live. Plus we got done at the dealer’s just as rush hour was gearing up. I hardly ever drive in heavy traffic anymore. Doing so in a brand-new car was nerve-wracking. I had a quick dinner with Jane and headed home. I ran out of electrical charge 14 miles away. The car seamlessly switched to the gas generator. It took 0.33 gallons to get me to my garage.

The charging cord stretched easily across the two-car garage. I plugged in at 7:00 p.m. The car told me the battery would be fully charged by 2:00 p.m. the following day. I left for work 12 hours after getting home and had enough charge to make it to campus where I finished charging it.

Reserved parking at the charging station

I will get a charging station put in soon, which will decrease the charging time to 6 hours. EV charging stations are available from Amazon at half the price of the one Nissan recommends, and Terry is willing to try to install it himself.

I’ve been about 200 miles so far and used less than half a gallon of gas. And our solar panels are offsetting some of the electricity that I’ve used. Driving on sunshine, baby! Pretty awesome.

Mother's Day

The most exciting thing that happened this week was the arrival of the ComEd bill for our first month of solar energy production. The total was $14.84, considerably less than the usual $300. “And it was cloudy!” Terry remarked. When we have more sun, we may break even or better, although by then it could all get used up by the air conditioner.

Our first ComEd bill since putting in the solar panels. Note remarkable difference in the size of the last bar on the graph.

Gracie got broody again and had to spend a couple of days in isolation. The nights were too cold to leave her outside.  We set up the rabbit hutch in the greenhouse. She was back with the flock by Wednesday.

Gracie does time in solitary

Thursday morning, Hilda heard a ruckus in the greenhouse when she went to open it up. There was the lonely pheasant, whom Terry has named “Bertie.” He didn’t know what to do and flew around knocking over the plants (including Hilda’s best pepper seedling). Hilda went around the outside to open the other door, through which he made his escape. Bertie hasn’t been around so much since this little misadventure.

I finally got the hummingbird feeder up Saturday morning. Moments later, a male hummingbird was on it, as if he’d been waiting. I didn’t see him again until early the next morning.

First hummingbird on the feeder

I was delighted to see the white crowned sparrows were back. They don’t always stay long. This year, we have a group of 5 hanging around.

Five white-crowned sparrows, two of which are having an altercation over something

The 13-striped ground squirrels visit the feeders also. Goldfinches are seemingly picky eaters and throw 10 sunflower seeds to the ground for every one they eat. The ground squirrels stuff these seeds into their cheeks until it appears that their faces will pop. Then they run off to cache the seeds in their dens.

Ground squirrel packing his cheeks

The apples are in full bloom. Terry has been anxiously watching for pollinators. Bees are most active on sunny days. If the apples bloom during a cloudy spell, there will not be as many apples. Yesterday was beautiful. The trees were humming with insect activity. Some were the size and shape of honeybees, but the color variation makes me suspect that there were several different species represented. I saw a bumblebee also, but it was camera shy.

The apple orchard and the fifth oak

A bee with pollen-packed leg baskets.

I haven’t seen any tom turkeys around lately. I mostly see a solitary female. She has made a dust bath beneath the fifth oak. When I first saw her out there, I feared that she had dug up the native perennials I had just planted. She had left them alone, taking advantage of a spot to the west where I had loosened the soil by pulling up the dandelions. I tried to get a picture of her in the dust bath but was not able to sneak up on her. Here she is walking away from the dust bath (through dandelions that I had mowed three days previously).

A turkey leaving her dust bath

And here is her dust bath.

Turkey dust bath at the base of the fifth oak. The shadows of the branches obscure the contours.

Hilda has had a hankering for spanakopita. She used to be able to get big boxes of it at Sam’s. They haven’t had any in stock for some time. She and I looked everywhere we normally shop to no avail. I suggested that we make it for Mother’s Day.

As I was searching the frozen foods at Meijer looking for fillo, I saw a box of prepared spanakopita. I persisted in my original quest because it would be a fun activity for us to do together. I didn’t take any pictures of the process because working with fillo is always nerve-wracking. You have to move quickly and keep the unused dough covered with a wet towel, but not too wet. We developed a system in which Hilda would separate the top sheet from the rest and lift. I lifted from the middle to the opposite end, and then we both moved the sheet to the cutting board.

The final product was good. We used up the whole package of fillo and filling made from two packages of frozen spinach. There are plenty left for the freezer.

Spanakopita

Jane joined us for dinner. She took a picture of Hilda and me because “someday you’ll want it.” I’m just so grateful that Hilda is still with me, still with it, and still engaged, interested, and independent. I have so many friends who are orphans now. It was a good Mother’s Day.

Mom and me on Mother's Day

This is May?

My old friend Mac used to say there were six seasons: summer, fall , locking, winter, unlocking, spring. We are still unlocking. Lovely, mild (almost hot) weather last weekend; cold, dreary, rainy this weekend. On a day like this, last Sunday’s weather seems like a cruel tease. Hard to believe it’s May. Terry was eager to finish his seventh heeling bed (where trees are “heeled in” to grow to market size). He needed my help to hold the 8’ tall roll of deer netting while he wired it to the posts.

 It was not clear to me how I would get everything done this weekend. I had a haircut and an evening event at work Friday. I spent the morning weeding the asparagus, finishing the two short rows. One long row to go. After my haircut, I spent the afternoon before the event in my office getting things ready for Monday.

Game night was Saturday. I was afraid I would not have time to get my shopping done before 3:00, when game night was schedule to begin. Therefore, Terry and I tentatively planned to put up the fencing Saturday morning when I was done baking the first rhubarb pie of the season. (When told Pat we planned to do fencing, her first thought was that we were going to get out the foils, masks, and leather gloves. Once a P.E. teacher, always a P.E. teacher.)

The first rhubarb pie of the season

By the time I had the pie out of the oven and the ham in the slow cooker, about 10:00, a big green blob on the radar was headed straight for us.  Fencing was out. I took a quick shower and headed down to Trader Joe’s to speed shop in the rain. I got my groceries and was back home by 1:15. Plenty of time to finish getting ready before the guests arrived. The rain kept up all afternoon.

We had a lovely feast. Here is a roasted beet and feta cheese salad that Nancy made.

The beet salad with its slightly sweet dressing went perfectly with the ham (which Jane provided). When I mentioned this to Nancy, she told me that she had found the recipe by Googling “salads that go with ham.” I would not have thought to do that.

Roasted beet, feta, and pecan salad

Hilda made Marilyn’s hot potato salad, a classic ham side dish in our house.

Marilyn's hot potato salad

Spiral sliced ham (not a water-added product)

We played our usual 13 rounds of Mexican train, and I won not even once. For the first four rounds, I drew the double one and was never able to play it. Not my best night. Tons of fun, nevertheless. We do have some good laughs.

Terry and I were both ready to start the fence at 9:00 this morning. It wasn’t raining exactly, but it was 42°F with a wicked and mist-laden wind blowing from the northeast. It took us a few minutes to remember how we did it last time. We soon had the system down and proceeded efficiently. Terry didn’t bother completely securing the fence, as that involved tape, which was never going to stick to wet posts. He put two or three wires on each post, and we moved on. When we were done, Terry told me it had taken one hour and 37 minutes. He’s quantitative like that. I hadn’t even bothered to put on my watch.

The new fence

I returned to the house to finish my food preparation for the week. By early afternoon the temperature was edging up to 50°F. I took my camera out to check on things. In spite of the thermometer reading, I was not uncomfortable in my winter coat. I saw four tadpoles in the puddle by the willows again.

Chorus frog tadpole--still tiny, still no legs

There were snipes by the willows as well as at the south end, which flooded again with yesterday’s rain (“sixty-five hundredths” according to Terry).

Jack is now officially visible in his pulpit.

Jack in the pulpit

The clouds are a bit higher now, but I have decided it is too muddy and cold to try to finish weeding the asparagus. The weeds will undoubtedly take off when it warms up tomorrow and Tuesday. I won’t have time to get back to them until next weekend. Such is the working life. (I’m the only person in my house who is not retired, you know, but I’m not bitter….)

Lonely bachelor

The pheasant cock persists in pestering our hens. He stands outside the fence, squawking and posturing, to no avail. We had a pheasant hen on the property last year. We hope that another one will come around soon. It would be fun to have some pheasant chicks.

Ring-necked pheasant ruffling his feathers to uninterested chickens

The tom turkeys are not having the same trouble finding mates. One morning last week, three toms were displaying in the field across the road to about 9 hens. I got a picture of the rafter running around the garage by the magnolia that is about to bloom.

Turkeys beneath the magnolia

The plum tree is in full blossom.

Plum blossoms

The standing water is gone from the south end of the property. The chorus frogs were smart not to lay eggs there. The only plants that are clearly evident now are curly dock and reed canary grass. I am in despair for my native prairie plants.

The snipes have moved to the willows on the north side where the water persists. I saw three of them take off out of there yesterday. I also saw a few solitary tiny tadpoles. Here is one nestled in the muck. I took the picture first and then verified that it was a tadpole by poking at it. It was seriously tiny, less than 1 cm long including the tail. I hope they have time to turn into frogs before that puddle dries up.

The black dot in the middle is the head of a tiny tadpole

I was relieved to see that the wild ginger came up again back by the creek. I planted it several years ago and kept it protected with a tomato cage until it had gotten sufficiently robust that I felt it could withstand herbivory. Last year, I took the cage off. I told Terry what I had done and asked him to pick up the cage next time he was back there with the Gator. A few days later, he went back with the weed whacker to attack the garlic mustard and cut off my ginger in the process. I was, to use a phrase I learned from Kate just this week, so mad I was spitting bees. Thus, I have been anxiously awaiting their renewed growth.

My wild ginger survived last year's weed whacker attack

The jack-in-the-pulpit made it through another year, still in its tomato cage (I have learned…).

Jack-in-the-pulpit

Violets are blooming also.

Violets

The asparagus is up. The first two harvests have given us enough for one meal. The thistles are up as well. I must go weed when I am done with this post.

Asparagus

Quick trip to summer

Hoo-boy, it feels good to sit down tonight. I have a familiar ache in my back, hips, toes and fingertips. Gardening season has begun.

The last two days could not have been more different than last Sunday, when the weather was so cold, wet, and dreary that I wouldn’t have gone outside even if I’d had time. Temperatures have been in the 80’s all weekend.  52 kWh today, and the sun isn’t down yet. Our all-time high so far was 60 kWh last Tuesday, which was an absolutely cloudless day.

The puddles are drying up. I took Terry on a snipe hunt after work Thursday. Not a snipe to be seen. The chorus frogs knew what they were doing. Had they laid eggs, all the tadpoles would be little raisins very soon.

Friday morning we had a flashy visitor under the bird feeder. As I crept around the side of the house on the deck, a turkey joined him. The turkey ran off faster, however, and I only had a chance to photograph the pheasant. He’s been hanging around lately. Terry’s hypothesis is that he’s looking for a mate and wants one of our hens.

A high stepping pheasant walking away from the bird feeder. Did you know they had ear feathers?

 I had a number of chicken chores on my list for the weekend. The egg ramp suffered a number of soft-shelled eggs when the new hens were learning to lay. We wiped up as best we could, but through the winter, dust accumulated on the spots. I promised myself I would clean on the first nice day.

Egg ramp before cleaning

Yesterday afternoon, I took a wet vac, a scrub brush, and a squirt bottle of fragrance-free laundry soap to the coop. (I have read that chickens are sensitive to fragrances.) I squirted, scrubbed, and vacuumed up the dirty water. It looked a lot better when I was done.

Egg ramp after cleaning

I weeded about half of the flower bed on the north side of the garage and separated one of two clumps of shooting stars. I like to keep one as a control. If the dividing doesn’t work out, I haven’t lost them all. Today, they all looked fine, giving me confidence to divide another couple of bunches that I needed to transplant.

When I finished my inside work this morning, I went back to chicken chores. Hilda and I hung a new nipped waterer from the ceiling. You may recall we got a heated nipple waterer last winter, which was much, much better than the heated bowl that had to be cleaned every single morning. Nipple waterers just need more water added each day, with a weekly rinse out. So much better.

The cord on the heated waterer is a pain when it isn’t needed. Hilda got an unheated nipple waterer. I saw Chloe peck at it once, but I’m not sure she got any water. They’ll learn.

Chloe (center, between Miss Peckwitt and Lilian) examines the nipple waterer 

Next up, I spaded one of the raised beds in the run. We have a lot of clay, and the surface gets hard as a rock. It was getting right hot by then. I hadn’t sweat that much since Belize. I added some mulch from the bottom of my bin. I have learned not to put it on the garden because it does not get hot enough to kill the seeds. Imagine a solid lawn of tomato seedlings. I put the mulch in the chicken’s bed so they could have fun picking through it for treats. Which they did for the rest of the day, in between taking luxuriant dust baths in the loose soil. Dust baths are an important part of chicken hygiene. It keeps them free of ectoparasites like mites.

The hens pick through the mulch in a raised bed

Here's a brief video of Clair and Helen dust bathing.

The grass seed is coming up in the part of the run that is resting.

Grass seedlngs

It is not growing fast enough. I had hoped to get the fence moved back to its original position before they trashed the grass in front of the greenhouse. Too late.

Trashed grass in front of the greenhouse

The barley has come up. That will keep the girls busy for a while when the time comes to let them have at it.

The barley is growing nicely

For the remainder of the afternoon, I transplanted the wildflowers that I brought from our previous home and planted near the road “temporarily” until I could figure out where I wanted them. That was four years ago. They are now in their permanent home underneath the fifth oak. Every year since then, I have put in on my list and not gotten to it. Today, I can cross it off.

Snipe Hunt

To tie up the last loose end, ComEd came Wednesday to swap the old meter for a new one. We are live! The only sunny day we’ve had was yesterday, generating 57 kWh. The cloudy days have generated half that or less—today was dreary indeed with a total of only 7 kWh. The coming week should be better.

The inverter measuring electrical output. The manual says that from left to right the numbers are the AC being generated, the DC used, and the total AC for the day. I'm not sure what that all means.

Like many or maybe even most children, I grew up thinking that snipes were mythical creatures, similar to unicorns except meaner. The snipe hunt was a way for older kids to lure uninitiated younger kids out into the woods in the dark to scare them.

Two weeks ago, I was thrilled to pieces when I walked out to our prairie restoration area (which at present is a wet meadow) and saw a bird with a long bill that resembled a woodcock. Then I saw another, and then a group of three. I looked up woodcocks in Sibley and found that there were several things wrong with my tentative identification. 1) Woodcocks have no flight call. The birds I saw definitely made a noise when they took off. Not a pretty noise, nor a long one, but a noise nevertheless. 2) Woodcocks live in the woods, not in wet meadows. But guess what! Snipes are real. On the very next page was a picture of the common snipe, Gallinago gallinago. They look a lot like woodcocks, but are a little smaller. Sibley described the flight call as “a dry, harsh, scraping, scresh or kesh,” and they inhabit wet meadows.

Last week, I saw them again. When I got home from GardenFest yesterday, I put the telephoto lens on my camera and went out to see if I could get a picture. I scared up a dozen or so in four bursts. Snipes fly fast and erratically. It was not easy to get a photo. In my snipe research, I discovered that the term “sniper” originally referred to someone sufficiently skilled with a gun to shoot snipes, and that’s saying something. Like Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster, my picture of the snipe is appropriately grainy and out of focus. The “boldly striped back,” white belly, and black wedge on the wing are characters that separate it from the woodcock.

Grainy, out-of-focus picture of the not-mythical snipe

Six snipes flying away after I disturbed them

I suspect the snipes are feasting on chorus frogs, which I have yet to see. I even poked around under the water looking for eggs, but all I found was filamentous algae. Some of the algae is forming mats on the water’s surface. No eggs, no tadpoles. Still plenty of noise from the chorus frogs. When will they get down to business? That six inches of standing water won’t last forever!

Mat of filamentous algae in the stagnant water of the wet meadow

The upside of the cloudy weather has been a slight downtick in the box elder bug and ladybug populations. As soon as the sun comes out, however, they’re back. Here’s a congregation of box elder bugs on the patio.

A congregation of box elder bugs

The turkeys are back too. I saw a tom displaying to five hens today. I was in the middle of kitchen work and didn’t take a picture. The hens were uninterested.

One of the silver crested chickens has laid three tiny eggs over the last two weeks. (I guess they could both be doing it.) The two eggs I have opened both have nothing but white and what looks like yolk membrane. It’s gross. I have thrown them out. I had so hoped there would be perfect tiny yolks inside. It turns out that the eggs are only cute while in the shell.

A cute little white egg

Not so cute on the inside

April snow

All day yesterday we had alternating blizzards and blue sky. It was cold and terribly windy. Hilda shut the chicken coop early in the afternoon because the girls weren’t out anyway, and the coop would stay warmer.

This is April?

The rhubarb is coming up. It does not seem to mind the return of cold weather.

Rhubarb sprouting

We had our March game night in April because of various scheduling conflicts. We choose appetizers as our theme, knowing the whole time that there would be WAY too much food if we all brought something to pass. Hilda saw a recipe in Cook it in Cast Iron for Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip. She gave me the choice of making that or Parmesan chicken wings. I picked the former because she is better at wings, and I love making bread.

When I got down to really thinking about it Friday, I realized that the Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip was not really a make-ahead thing. The recipe involved lining the outside of a 10” cast iron skillet with balls of pizza dough, letting the dough rise for 20 minutes, baking it for 20 minutes, filling the middle with a mixture of pizza sauce, cream cheese, mozzarella, and crispy pepperoni bits, and baking 10 more minutes.  Our game nights really start in the afternoon so the guests can get home at a decent hour. Thus, I had to have the prep work done before the guests arrived at 3:00 and be able to quickly finish it up and have it hot by 5:00 or so.

I began by making pizza dough using the recipe from Cook it in Cast Iron. I had misgivings because the whole thing was done in the food processor and took about 2 minutes. I was horrified to find that when I removed it from the bowl, it had developed so much gluten that I could have bounced it off the floor. As I mentioned last week, however, if it doesn’t have eggs, you can abuse it as much as you want. I put it in a greased bowl to rise and crossed my fingers. After an hour, it was still a tight ball at the bottom of the bowl. After two hours, it had relaxed and looked more like it should. I proceeded to make the dough balls, which I let rise for an hour. I baked them for the first 20 minutes and figured it would hold there. I would put in the filling and finish the baking just before serving. And it was delicious.

Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip

In addition to the pepperoni pizza dip and wings, we had deviled eggs, a tomato/rosemary tart, artichoke dip, Rumaki (traditionally chicken livers and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, but in this iteration, Lit’l Smokies replaced the chicken livers, which was a-okay with nearly everyone), shrimp cocktail and a variety of salty, crunchy snacks. We started with the cold hors d’oeuvres at 3:00 and ate more or less continuously until 6:00. Oof.

At Terry’s request (he was one of the two March birthday boys, my dad being the other one), I made a peach pie for dessert. I’d had the peaches in the freezer for quite some time, making it more of a Tundra Surprise pie. It turned out fine. I baked it first thing in the morning and had to get the picnic net out to keep the box elder bugs and Asian lady bugs off of it.

Bug-protected peach pie

Box elder bugs on the window behind the pie

The bugs have been driving us insane since the ground thawed. They seem to be attracted to water. The ladybugs are marginally worse because they release a stink when squished or even just brushed from the counter. The Asian ladybug was important intentionally to control soybean aphids. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Here is a picture of one that was on its way to contaminating my toothbrush.

Ladybug stalking my toothbrush

Soon the box elders will be leafed out and the soybeans will be up. The bug density in the house will go down until fall. It’s all part of the cycle of life here in the country.