Summary

The author describes their experience living in a mountain cabin and dealing with insects and birds building nests around their home.

Abstract

The author shares their experience living in a mountain cabin, highlighting the peaceful and quiet surroundings. They mention the challenges of living in a remote area, such as the need for a four-wheel drive vehicle in the winter and the lack of convenience stores nearby. The author also describes the beauty of the area, including the variety of trees and the lack of mosquitoes. However, they also mention the presence of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, and bumblebees, as well as birds, that have built nests and hives around their home. The author has taken steps to prevent these creatures from returning, such as building a lower deck and screening the upper deck.

Opinions

The author enjoys living in a peaceful and quiet mountain cabin.
The author finds the lack of mosquitoes in the area to be a positive aspect of living there.
The author has a negative view of the insects and birds that have built nests and hives around their home.
The author has taken steps to prevent these creatures from returning and seems pleased with the results.
The author recommends using an AI service for writing and other tasks.

Life on the Mountain

Spring! The First Six Months — From the Mountain

“Old Mountain Cabin” Photograph by JD Adams

This old boy is a marker for us of sorts. Maybe a couple of neighbors know how old this place is, but it’s been abandoned for a long time. The last paved road leading to our house, Pine Log, climbs uphill and by an old cemetery, an old small single room church just to the right of the cabin, and then this old cabin itself.

From here a left turn onto a small single-lane dirt and gravel road that disappears uphill and into the forest, under a canopy of trees and to a fork in the road, a horse pasture, and continuing the climb uphill through the forest, still on this single-lane gravel road to another fork in the road where you’ll find our home.

“The Gravel Road” Photography by JD Adams

Four-wheel drive is required in the winter if leaving the house. Lesson learned. Returning from town one snowy morning in January, I could only get within a mile of my home. I’m saving my pennies.

Things are pretty much how and what we expected when we decided to move here last summer, moving into the home in the middle of October. Quiet, friendly, peaceful… eight miles into town is a 20-minute trip because it’s mostly all twisty turns through the hills and valleys.

Here there’s no such thing as “running to the grocery store”. Just as there’s no such running up the yard to the house. It’s a steep yard. Which is why I bought a John Deere riding mower, not a hand mower. The grass portion of the yard is a half-acre… up and down.

One thing we discovered is the distinct lack of mosquitos. One can actually sit outside on the deck in the evening, surrounded by a forest consisting of a wide variety of trees from pine to maple to elm, and some I am unfamiliar with that flower. Looking out over the mountains without swatting mosquitos every 3 seconds is another thing that I loved about this area.

So here we are… Spring has sprung and the grass has riz, we’ve stopped wondering where the flowers is… and the bees and the wasps and…

Because there are bees. Lots of little buggers that sting, like wasps, yellow jackets, and bumblebees. And like the people here, they seem friendly enough. The birds and bear are kind of standoff-ish though.

But evidently, past owners of this house never made an attempt to disassociate the house from these little guys with stingers… and birds! You see, these little buggers will return year after year unless one hinders their desire to return and their inability to build a home. This was my task at hand this past weekend.

So this past week I’ve been working outside, watching to see exactly where they are going. This after clearing out over a dozen old hives and bird nests all built on the underside of the upper deck. The wasps were everywhere, underneath the deck, inside the screened-in upper deck, and entering the outside wall into the basement in two places. Birds also returned to build 2 more nests. Wasps built 2 more hives. All this in one day.

“Flowers, Bees and Trees” Photography by JD Adams

So we built a lower deck covering the former homes of the yellow jackets and now they are gone, moved on to a more desirable place. This is our hope. And to be safe, the lower deck has been screened from the deck to the ground to keep them from flying under the deck where the yellow jackets had burrowed into the ground year after year.

The underside of the upper deck has also been screened cutting off the wasps and bumblebees from building hives on the underside and stopping birds from nesting. The upper deck itself, though half is completely screened, had wasps in it as well. But how?

They were coming up through the floorboards from their hives underneath. Screening the underside works perfectly, but I also sealed the floorboards. A genius idea that came to me walking around Home Depot.

I then found where wasps were entering the basement through small openings around screened vents placed in the concrete walls. Sealed all openings in all the vents around the house, and then inside the basement sealed the openings where they were headed once they were through the wall.

Now you know how I have spent the past week, when not writing of course or taking the dogs for a walk. No more little buggers that sting. No more birds pooping all over the deck. I win!