OK, so I underestimated the fly population. Today Big Rat is certainly getting back at me. After nailing about 8 or so of these hovering mammoths in the kitchen before Abner, Matt, Bear and I left for a couple hours hiking in the National Forest this afternoon, we returned to find about 30 of them virtually immobile on the windows in the kitchen. Now normally I do not consider myself a killing machine but this afternoon, armed only with an already read section of the New York Times, I felt positively like Dick Cheney on safari. Slam, whack, squish! These things are so slow and sluggish a blind guy could take them out. If the birth rate continues to rise I will probably go out and buy a can of Raid and really take care of them. For now, there is an odd sense of satisfaction in doing a "Soprano" on these nasty critters against the window with my own newspaper.

That was Sunday. Yesterday things really got ugly. The heaviest concentration of these winged Buicks is in the kitchen but a few have spread to other rooms in the house. I decided to take the WMD approach and bought a large can of Raid. Upon our return from hiking at Biltmore yesterday afternoon, I unleashed the weapon on the 20 or so unsuspecting behemoths that were lounging casually on the two kitchen windows above the sink. It was almost instant carnage. There was a little buzzing and flopping around, but death was pretty quick. The population was down considerably this morning. Not one additional living fly was visible in the kitchen. I suspect there is lingering fallout from the "bomb". There are a few stragglers in the breakfast room and refugees in the dining room and the upstairs bathroom, but most of those can be gotten with conventional weaponry. . .the New York Times.


As you can see from the pictures, Abner and I have been enjoying the beginnings of spring in the gardens and on the grounds of Biltmore. The crowds are still pretty light other than on weekends, but the closer we get to the beginning of April, the more people show up to see the flowers. The displays are pretty minimal now, but are showing hints of the explosion to come. Tulips are the biggest of the hidden surprises. They do something different each year, but the shear numbers of them are pretty impressive irrespective of type and color. The picture of the lagoon and the picture of Abner lying down resting and watching some horses ambling by with paid riders are taken from the same spot. The shot of the house with the still bare trees is just uphill. A lot of the flowering trees and shrubs are already blooming but few have leaves. This is something that still surprises me when it happens. It seemed like most of the foliage in California bloomed and sprouted leaves at the same time.