The Table

the old kitchen table

What is the one room in your home that is used the most by the people who live there? I think you will say what I am going to say…but, no, it’s not the bathroom. (That was a joke.)

The most used room in my home, when we were a young family and our kids were growing up, was the kitchen. Cooking and eating is important, but in my kids' younger days the kitchen was used for so much more than that. My kids did not go to their rooms to do homework. That was done on the kitchen table where help (and oversight) was nearby and readily available. Today, it seems that parents want so much privacy for their kids. I wonder if they are becoming little independent beings too soon.

Realtors always mention updating the kitchen if you are planning to sell your home, but the reason does not necessarily involve providing a place for the family. It’s more cooking oriented which may or may not be important to people. Sleek expensive appliances and the latest in countertops and floors and lighting are a must-have to potential buyers. Not so in my day.

We’re always talking about how much better it was back in the day, and I think this is one thing that was much better. I bought my kitchen table from a little furniture store near our home that specialized in unfinished wood furniture. It’s one of those picnic-type pine tables that originally came with two unfinished wood benches suitable for two or three people on each side. Together, my husband and I stained it a rich walnut color and then gave it a couple of coats of polyurethane to seal the wood and give it a shine. But remember the table was pine, a soft wood.

That table traveled with us from home to home and if it could write a book, it would tell the story of my early married life. In fact, the tabletop does tell a story to anyone who looks closely. If you write with a pencil or pen on notebook paper on a pine table, you get indentations in the soft wood, and an embossed history of my children’s homework appears to those who look. If I peer closely, I can see math problems, spelling words, and history answers, and there’s even a heart with a couple of names inside and an arrow slicing through. Just about every time my kids come to visit nowadays, there’s some mention of something new they’ve found on that old table. It’s a great storyteller and memory enhancer, written down for posterity.

And, yes, it was used for eating, too, for our family meals as well as for large family gatherings, it was the table where the small children ate while the grownups had the dining room to themselves. I have many photos involving this lowly table with family and friends gathered round.

And I’ll never forget the father and son hurricane class project, but that one was beyond my level of understanding so I won’t go there. I’ll just say it was a success.

And it was a how-to-dust teacher to one of my granddaughters. The table is actually called a trestle table and has a bar that extends from one trestle leg to the other. I was forever bumping my head when I had to dust or wipe off the top of that bar so I did the next best thing. I taught my granddaughter to dust it, which did not take much teaching. She was a natural and so proud of herself. Horrified, it was the first thing out of her mouth when her mom picked her up that day. “G-mom made me dust.” Thankfully, her mom thought it was cute, but I was “treated” to that story numerous times and still am.

We’ve used the kitchen table for playing many games, scrabble, cards, Yatzee, Chinese Checkers, dominoes, and of course putting together puzzles. It’s a great place for snacking while playing. And I always feel more comfortable in the kitchen than anywhere else in my home. It’s where I make my grocery lists and sometimes do a quick iron with a towel rather than drag out the ironing board. The table is great for cutting out a sewing pattern and opening a big box and wrapping presents for birthdays and Christmas. I can’t think of any piece of furniture that has gotten as much use as that table.

As we aged and our children made their own homes, we outgrew the long benches and replaced them with more comfortable padded chairs, but the benches continue to serve a current purpose at the foot of beds. 

There is no way I could ever part with anything pertaining to the memories of  that old kitchen table. Some of you may have seen it. I’ll bet you wondered what all that graffiti was!

 

War of the Wasps

 

At the beginning of spring back in March, I started seeing 1 or 2 or 3 wasps buzzing around near the ceiling of my back porch. Since I am a nature lover, I thought that I could live with them with that old rule, “you don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.” 

For a few weeks this worked even though the numbers increased some. They never tried to sting me and at nightfall, they disappeared. But as the weather warmed more, the numbers increased and suddenly, it seemed, there were a dozen or more congregating just above the screen door exiting the porch. 

Had they been anywhere else, I may have continued a while longer trying to ignore them, but now I had to race out the door while worrying what they were going to do. Time for Googling how to get rid of the wasps naturally. They had been tolerable, but this was getting annoying.

Google said I could deter the wasps with many different much-hated wasp scents, number one being peppermint. Bingo! I already had peppermint oil. I mixed up some according to Google’s directions and sprayed around the ceiling and doorway. And I bought two peppermint plants at Publix and positioned them outside the porch door, ready to make them permanent additions to my landscaping if they worked. And yes, the smell of the spray did seem to deter them for a while although a few were stupid and did not know they were supposed to hate it. The smell wore off. The wasps came back. Persistent little buggers. The plants outside were completely ignored.

But I did as Google said and continued to respray, and after around two months, they got the message that they were not wanted and completely disappeared. Although it was labor intensive and somewhat expensive, I was satisfied and relieved that I had not had to kill them with a pesticide. My back porch was wasp-free. And the mint plants outside were thriving so, who knows, maybe that helped, too.

But then they, or their cousins, showed up again, this time on my front porch and not on the ceiling but in the dirt around one of my potted lilies beside the front door. The lilies were blooming profusely. Obviously, these were a different kind of wasp. I found their nest the hard way. Reaching into one of the plants to trim off some dead leaves, I was attacked. I dropped my scissors, yanked my hand back, and unbelievably stared at a wasp glued to my thumb even though I was shaking my hand like a maniac. I had to literally knock it off with my other hand. It did not want to turn loose, and I had not done anything to it! 

More were buzzing around me now so I raced inside, slamming the door behind me. I held my rapidly swelling thumb under the cold water faucet and piled on some baking soda that I grabbed from the fridge, but if it helped, it was minuscule. That sucker throbbed like a jackhammer. My poor thumb quickly swelled up to Paul Bunyan size.

Now I had a real dilemma. The more I looked at my thumb and suffered with the pain, the idea of live and let live quickly disappeared from my thought process. But if there was a way to get rid of them without the dreaded bug spray, I would find it so off I went to Tractor Supply and on one of the shelves I found Terro Wasp and Fly Trap, attracts and traps wasps, hornets, yellow jackets and flies. I mixed the bait (guaranteed not to attract pollinating insects) and hung it at the required height in a sunny area and waited. And waited. And waited. And in the meantime, my lily was kicking the bucket because I was afraid to water it. So I watched the blooms and leaves turn brown and waited some more. And, of course, I warned all visitors to come in by the back door.

I checked the Terro Trap often but noted only ants floating around in the nasty-looking liquid. I thought it might be too far away so I took it off its hook and set it on the concrete about two feet from the lily, but, still, no captured wasps appeared. I saw them buzzing around and giving me the evil eye, but they went nowhere near that trap. 

Giving up on Terro, I went back to Google and was directed to Angi, formerly Angie’s List, who had a wealth of information on pros who could do anything you required, specifically pest control of wasps for me. I filled out the requested information and hit send. I waited and waited and I’m still waiting to hear from a pro.

I was tired of fooling around so this time I went to Publix to the pest control section and grabbed the biggest ugliest looking spray can of Raid Wasp and Hornet Killer I could find. It stated on the can that it “kills on contact and sprays up to 22 feet!” Yes! Exactly what I needed. As soon as I got back home, I cracked open the front door just enough to reach through with the can in hand, and I soaked that poor little lily and all the dirt below it. I never saw a wasp but felt certain that it had worked. 

No, it didn’t. The next day I jiggled the lily with Jim’s old cane and a couple of wasps flew out to my amazement. I went to the garage and got my ammunition and sprayed again. This stuff had to work because I did not know anything else to do. I kept this up for four or five days and finally all the wasps seemed to be gone or dead. Several were lying belly up on lily leaves.

It has been about a week now and all seems well. I’ve watered and trimmed the lily and it may come back to be a healthy plant again. I do not know why the wasps, probably yellow jackets, were attracted to it, but I hope none are left to show them the way back. If that happens, I’ll be investing in some fake plants, the kinds that don’t die or need watering. Maybe that is the better idea anyway.