We welcomed our first official guests to Casa P. (or is “Ye Olde Homestead” better?) on Saturday. Stephanie is a blogging friend from way back, though like Tara, she long ago hung up her proverbial quill. We met up with them once before, in Portland. Had a great time but figured we’d never see them again, since they lived 2,000 miles away.
Fast-forward seven years, and the gap has shrunk to 900 miles. They’re in North Carolina now, and because Stephanie is super into gardening, she wanted to visit Northwind Perennial Farm in Burlington, WI, which is apparently well-known amongst gardening nerds, though I like to think the fact that we live here now had something to do with that decision. She and Tara have bonded over alliums and stinkweed and variegated whateverthef@cs, so she invited us to tag along as they checked out the farm. We figured we might as well meet up for breakfast first, and then since they’d traveled all that way, why not have them over to our place for dinner? Just like that, it turned into An All-Day Thing.
But a good one. I may not be into plants like those two, but the perennial farm was beautifully landscaped and had a lot of cool features, which made for interesting photo opps.
Afterward, they made the 45-minute drive out to our place, where we gave them a tour of the yard and hung out on the deck for a few hours, listening to records and sipping adult beverages and chatting. Sometimes about things not garden-related! I grilled chicken, Tara made macaroni and cheese, and they brought an apple pie from Lake Geneva, where they were staying. It was a good time, and Laverne & Shirley were on their best behavior. We didn’t know how they’d react to company, but they couldn’t have cared less.
“Congratulations!” they told us on their way out. “You aced the Stephanie and Jon hospitality test!”
Good thing, because we really don’t entertain that often. And it was perfect practice for my parents, who arrive tomorrow for a week-long stay.
It’s been a long time since they’ve bunked with us. When they came out to Wisconsin last October, we were in our subterranean apartment and didn’t have a guest bed, so they stayed in a motel. Earlier in 2022 they’d planned a visit to Rapid City; their luggage made it, but they never did.
I hope they packed mosquito repellent, ‘cause man alive, those suckers are out en masse. I think our yard might be an official Mosquito Sanctuary? I cannot set foot in the backyard without emerging covered in bites, even after spraying myself with insect repellent.
I was using some hippie-dippy DEET-free spray that contained ingredients like sunbeams and unicorn tears but that wasn’t doing shit, so I switched to Deep Woods OFF!. I know some people don’t like using possibly toxic chemicals, but I am not one of those people. Gimme all the DEETs! The CDC says as long as you don’t breathe it in, swallow it, or get it in your eyes, it’s perfectly safe. I’ll take DEET over malaria or dengue fever or Zika virus any day.
Having said that, even lathered in the stuff, I still manage to end up with bites. You have to reapply every so often, but the problem is, “every so often” is awfully vague. Apparently, two hours spent cutting the grass and pulling weeds while sweating in the warm sun is too long to go between applications, because I still ended up with a fresh round of bites yesterday.
Mosquitoes: they’ll be the death of me.
(Hopefully not literally.)
What’s a good name for our new pad? Do you have a lot of mosquitoes out your way? What do you to do protect yourself from bites?
Mark My Words 
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