Another Bird About to Leave the Nest

Our middle child and oldest son, Russ, recently purchased his own home in a town west of our home.  It was a big step for him and a big step for us.  With Laura already out on her own and now with Russ moving out next weekend, our little nest is getting empty!  This weekend we helped him load up some of his belongings.  Tricia helped him do some cleaning and organizing at his house.  We had to move a couch and some chairs and other things from upstairs.  We got it loaded onto the trailer.

Tricia and Russ

The home was built in 1953 and is in remarkable shape.  He lives in a quiet neighborhood and it will take him ten less minutes to commute to work each day.  Here he is unlocking his door and opening the door to a new chapter in his life - a new chapter for Mom & Dad, too!

Russ, being the horticulturalist, is excited that his house has a fig tree that is loaded with figs, two pear trees (no partridge), a grapefruit tree, and a tree in the front yard we had never seen before.  It is a tree from Hawaii called the Orchid Tree.  It is filled with beautiful blooms like this and has been blooming for 3 months straight and still going...

The tree is about 8 feet tall and has long bean pods hanging from it, similar to a mimosa, but bigger.

One thing Russ has at his house that he is NOT excited about is carpenter bees.  Here is one in flight that I captured with the camera on my phone.  That dude is heading for the rafters to his shed in the back.

These carpenter bees drill holes into the rafters and cause all sorts of damage.

Some really good friends of ours gave us a Carpenter Bee Trap.  It is a homemade device that is simply a mason jar with a block of wood from a landscape timber attached to the lid.  Holes are drilled in the landscape timber at angles that lead down to the jar.  The theory is that the carpenter bees crawl into the wood thinking it was a hole they drilled.  It leads down into the jar.  They fall in and cannot get out.

At the time I took this photo, he had already caught one!  But at the time of this writing, he's already caught four!

 It is going to be a big adjustment for Tricia and I when he moves out next weekend.  At that point, we'll have two of our three kids out of the house.  Our third, Benjamin, will be moving into the dorms at college this fall.  Time marches on...  Don't blink!