i am an unrequited astronomer, pretend patient, gentle adventurer, pedal enthusiast, recovering calligrapher, occasional thespian and unfinished poet living in portland, oregon. contacting me via email is usually a good idea.
2:08 PM: lovebugs
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auugghhhh! there are EIGHT MILLION bugs hanging out on the front of our house! there are slightly fewer than that on the back of the house. some are ladybugs, but most of them are that very common red-rimmed beetle thing that i wish i could google but i don't know its name. there a couple of very fat & happy spiders, too. it's fairly disturbing, actually.
update: i tried hosing them off the house, which wasn't very effective because they just kept returning a few minutes later. but the guy who came to repair our upstairs toilet immediately knew they were box elder bugs and it looks like they'll eventually go away on their own. i'm glad the studio faces north, though, because trying to enter or exit the house is a little creepy. and i don't quite understand why theyy picked our house to flock to, because other houses in the area are much less affected, and our house has no trees at all. hosing them led me to finally try looking for wasp nests, and i found a largish one under our eaves that refused to budge despite repeated spraying with two different types of nozzles and a ladder. our last hope is the 14-foot ladder that i wasn't feeling like tackling today, thanks.