to-do list

• make sangria & margaritas
  
• clean the bathroom
  
• stir up a hornets yellow jackets nest
  

We had, up until today, two compost bins by the back stairs - one just rotting, and one to throw new rotting stuff into. It turns out that yellow jackets were nesting in the one, and feeding in the other. I went out with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction (including a 10-ft pole). I (carefully) dis-assembled the one into its component pieces, raked down the resultant compost cone until I got to the nest, and blasted the hell out of it with neuro-toxins.

I let that one mellow a bit, while I worked on the other. Pretty much the same operation, minus the nest and the neuro-toxins.

Eventually, I raked the un-poisoned compost away from the vespids, and hauled it out into the woods. Even more eventually, I bagged up the nest and the poisoned compost (notable for the concentration of dead vespids).

Amazingly, I did this all without getting stung. The yellow jackets seemed more confused than angry. There are still a couple dozen, forlornly looking for their home, but they shouldn't be enough to bother our party guests.