Scheduled to fly back on the 23rd and arriving early in the morning, perfect time to catch a domestic flight to KKC with Thai Smile
Just had my sister fly in from Italy late last night, it is 10 am now and I am giving her a chance to sleep late before I call.
Other sister is in from Vero Beach for over a week , Brother and other sister live here now.
It is the first time since we were kids that all the sisters and brothers, all five of us, have been together since we were kids.
It should be fun,
or WW3 LOL. if things go south, I might change our departure day and make an early retreat.
But not before they pave the road LOL
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
See there are pros and cons to that BB. If you pour concrete around the perimeter of the place, when the summer hits that concrete becomes a HUGE heatsink. Then your house rises in temperature and once saturated you are pretty much done until rainy season returns to cool it off.
Yeah so the flipside from above is the grass and shrubs will keep your house cooler and looking nicer. Having the right tools makes the job fast and easy. In the end though, I think it all depends on what your personal plans are. If the house is a come visit place from time to time, I think I'd probably cement or rock the entire outside. Just easier in the big picture. However if you live here full time and travel on and off I much prefer the grass and trees. I fully admit in many regards I have become a full time groundskeeper but I like the outdoors and the exercise. On average I walk 15k to 18k steps every day, some days on a big work day I will hit 22k. Its also good for my cardio as I hit 145 for extended periods of time and sweat my ass off. I will work in rain or sun, doesn't really matter to me. My wife sits in the shade with her tablet and the dogs and watches me. The best part is that ice cold beer reward after a long day and then a few laps in the pool.
I get a lot of heat from my concrete driveway. I was thinking about painting it green. I guess you can buy floor paint here that will go on bare concrete. It is so wet at the moment I have plenty of time to think about it.
The more concrete you have the less bare earth there is to soak up the water. A good idea to have a 1/100 slope away from the house and a drain or at least a plan where the runoff will go. My genius builder did not do that and the path around the back has been wet so long it is now slime covered and super slippery.
I had an Australian in the garden today.
Ootai popped in to say hello and after a spot of fishing and a cup of coffee I was just accompanying him back to his car when he suddenly started shouting and swearing, slapping his head and back and then he ripped off his shirt and was making a right spectacle of himself. I'm used to Aussies so didn't pay too much attention but then I noticed he had a swarm of wasps buzzing around his head.
He reckons he was stung half a dozen times and the strange thing is I wasn't touched.
Anyway, we found the culprits. They obviously don't like Aussies.
No comment.
I don't kill much in our garden and it was a shame to exterminate these guys after they'd provided so much amusement.
But they had to go. Those stings hurt.
Drinking Ya Dong every day does have its positives Mendy. That sasquatch Ootai and his teetotalling makes him an easy target.
BTW, I hate those sneaky bastards. I was trimming up my hedges and out they came. I didn't get stung but my FIL did. He gets stung by them frequently
“absence makes the heart grow fonder” LOL
I agree with you in everything you had to say in your reply, Our thinking was the same concerning the concrete being a heat sink. Thai people seem not too mind it, but they are a lot more tolerant of the heat. I guess there were some that could not take the heat, but it was very hard to get their sweaty ass laid and they did not get a chance to pass their sweaty genes. LOL
I see them wearing long pans a jacket and their ninja masks, and look comfortable while I am wearing the bare minimum that would not get me arrested and sweating my ass of.
I am fine as long as I don't do anything, or at least that's what I try to tell my wife, but the moment I try to do some work in this heat. my tee-shirt is drenched in sweat. I have a self propelled lawnmower that I brought over from the US when we had some things shipped over, but this Malay grass sure grows very thick and some times I have to lift the back up so that the front self propelled wheel would get some traction. I can not imagine cutting the grass without it.
I also have a bare concrete driveway and a couple of meter wide of concrete in the back and one side. The side and back are in the shade, so that's no problem, but they get green from algae growth during the rainy season and I have to pressure wash then every so often . The Driveway does indeed get very hot!! In the sun you could cook an egg on it. I was also thinking if painting it , no so much for the heat , as much as keeping it clean. Here in Greece I see these patios that looked like they had slate tiles, Then when I looked closer I notice that it was simply concrete painted slate gray and white grout lines painted on it. It looked very nice, but it looked like a lot of work. When I go out I will take a picture and post. If you find a good deck enamel for cement let me know. I am interested in doing something with the driveway. On the sides I think I will put tiles.
Those wasps sure look nasty!!
Put a lighter in front of that spray and you could have a proper flame thrower
Or at least some more entertainment from your Flambe' friend LOL
Seriously though , if you can get yourself a CO2 fire extinguisher , the cold of the spray puts them to sleep and you can re-locate them, I have been told.
If you try it please let me know how it worked out, and please post video, in fact you don't need to tell me, just post the vid.
In UK my house had an area of concrete outside the back door, there was a canopy over but the sides were open. One summer's day I hosed it down and once it was dry I slapped on some terracotta coloured floor paint. No cats or dogs to think about there. It dried to a matt finish, not slippy, and looked a hundred times better than dirty concrete. Also easier to clean. I was quite pleased with it. I think it was sold there as garage floor paint, it wore very well.
Here my drive would be a much bigger area. I still think I could manage it myself using a long-handled roller. A dark green would make the drive visually less offensive. I don't know about heat reflection. I remember going to Sepang to watch the last F1 race held there, we were sitting under a covered stand but that evening I discovered I was sunburnt under the chin, reflection from the black racetrack.
^ If you paint it blue it looks like you've got a swimming pool on Google Earth.
The ones to watch for are the Giant Asian Hornet. They are black with an orange band on their thorax. They are swarm attack hornets and are relentless when threatened. The ones above in the thread I believe are a species of paper wasps. Their sting burns like a sumbich but those big hornets pack a wallop.
The gf is sure that is what this nest is. I didn't see one and I'm not climbing the tree to look.
Something black with an orange band flew out of my mango tree last year, brushed my arm and flew off again. That wasn't like a sting, I really felt nothing, then it flared up and was uncomfortable for over a week. It was a very small nest and I zapped it.
Three weeks ago I was stung by one of these. Some of my victims:
I get a slight reaction from normal bee stings, this one gave swelling and itching for four days. They were building a honeycomb style nest in one of the plant tubs.
It would be a few years ago now, the local park near us was closed for days while hornets were eradicated. We've had them around the house before but only one other time had them try to settle here as a new home.
^ These look like the common paper wasp species here. They are aggressive and annoying as you bump a branch and they zap ya. I find numerous nests and if off away from the house I let them do their thing. If close by, I take them out.
I think that yesterday when I was attacked at Mendip's place I must have brushed against the tree they had their nest in and then one stung me. It hurt quite bad like someone had stuck a big needle in me.
Then I walked back past them again heading for a concrete post I saw on which I was going to try and scratch whatever stabbed me as I couldn't reach the site. Then a whole pile of the bastards started on my and as Mendy said I started going crazy waving my shirt around and trying to get away from them. Of course Mendy's dogs were going apeshit.
Today on reflection I am starting to think Mendip trained the fukkers to attack me the evil pommy bastard he is.
As for wiping them out at home I always use WD40 and they are dead before they hit the ground. About 20 years ago in Aussie my missus did some work for a friend who was an apiarist and he told us that we should not use anything like petrol(gasoline for the Yanks) as it will kill any bees present and any that go into the hive box in the future so maybe a spray bottle full of petrol would work just as well as WD40 seems to. Just a reminder don't light the stuff as someone suggested.
I have never before known a dog like Maya for eating things.
She regularly catches pigeons and sparrows in the garden and eats them, just leaving their little feet and a patch of feathers.
She catches and munches on geckos. She steals charcoal from the sack and crunches and eats it.
I often find her munching on insects... she loves big beetles and water bugs and just leaves the hard carapaces.
Today I found her eating something and took it out of her mouth. The front end of a scorpion.
Those pincers had a 2 inch gape.
and some owners let their dogs lick their faces ffs
We get a lot of that, Shutree.
I collect the dessicated, fried ones for the chickens. Kind of like worm biltong. The chickens love it.
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