Ever since then, all my life, I have been struggling to remain calm whenever a wasp comes near.  What is annoying is that wasps always seem to come to me!

I learned that the best way to stop them bothering me (usually the worst times are when eating outside) so I kept a fine mist bottle sprayer, filled with clean water near me, whenever possible.  This wet mist makes them hurry away and best of all they do not return!


Swiss Garden Free Help

We have had a problem with our Swiss garden.  Every time we arrived back from our couple of months in Spain, we had to tackle our overgrown garden that was full of weeds again.  We had arranged to have the lawn cut now and then whilst in Spain, but that was all that we had done, because of the remarkably excessive cost of labour!  We were quoted well over 7,000 CHF per year, to keep part of our garden in reasonable order, but this was not to look after all the garden and was also restricted to coming only whilst we were away!  I decided this was far too expensive and then Trudy had a particularly promising idea.

We had discovered that there was a long waiting list for garden allotments, and there were not any near to our home.  The demand came about, because there are so many apartment blocks without gardens and more are being built all the time.  We decided to put a free card advert, in the two local supermarkets, to advertise 'Free Garden Land to Grow Your Own Vegetables', in return for maintaining the rest of our garden.  Within 3 days a lady came who was so keen she wanted to start right away! 

We explained that we have a separate part of our garden which had often been used for vegetables, and we would allow her to use this large piece of land free of charge and she can come as often as she likes.  But in return we expect her to look after the whole garden for us, she can use our garden tools and there is electricity and water available in our garden.  We are lucky to have a back-passage access to it, so there was no need to come through the house.