Fruits and flies

Went to Superstore yesterday for my weekly shopping as usual. Was delighted to see local produce - fresh tomatoes grown right here in Alberta for an incredibly cheap rate. Usually when the tomatoes are priced low, you know that most of them are almost rotten and they're trying to clear the stock. Not yesterday though! So I bought lots and made thakaali saadam today. They had locally grown cukes as well. So velrikkai raitha was the accompaniment. 'Fairly good!' was my husband's verdict.

Didn't buy much fruit since we'd planned to go fruit picking in the evening. So we went to Buckler's farm near Cochrane to pick some fruit and veggies. It was 4pm and almost all the strawberries were gone. We did manage to pick an entire pail of em in the next hour though. A pail full of strawberries for $12. Very reasonable when you consider that grocery stores typically sell them for almost twice as much and they're nowhere as sweet as these. I guess the stores pick them unripe and then ripen em whereas we had
the luxury of picking the ripe sweet ones. Will post some photos tomorrow of the place.

Speaking of fruit, we have a terrible fruit fly problem in our kitchen. They seem to be everywhere esp the garbage can. My husband did some heavyduty cleaning today hoping that would discourage them but so far they're still all around. As usual, I googled for info on getting rid of them and found a rather interesting site with tons of murderous but effective ideas. Am doing the bowl trap thing and it seems to be working.

There is a hornets nest under one of our deck chairs. It was pebble sized about 3 weeks ago and is now football sized. The hornets seem to increasingly dislike our presence on the deck. Been wondering how to reclaim the deck. So we actually bought a spray for killing the hornets, nest and all. I feel a bit bad though - all that murder! But whats the alternative? Stay away from our backyard through the summer? What will happen to the lawn when no one mows it?