Bonfire Revelation: We Need a Bat House

Tonight, we decided to have a campfire in our own backyard. Andy got some wood, and we raided the fridge to figure out what we'd grill.

I collected remnants of last week's CSA box in hopes of a yummy grilled veggie salad. I found zucchini, a few orange beets, a fennel bulb, and some broccoli. I decided to spice this up and then put some leftover marinara sauce over it. Yum!

If you've never made a grilled veggie salad, I highly recommend it! You will need a grill basket. Grilled vegetables are super delicious because grilling gets all the yummy veggie sugars cooking, so your vegetables end up tasting delectably sweet. A good cookbook to start grilling vegetarian style is The Vegetarian Grill: 200 Recipes for Inspired Flame-Kissed Meals, although once you get started with vegetarian grilling, you'll soon realize it's as easy as throwing vegetables on the grill with some olive oil, and later dressing it with a sauce or topping of your choice.

The bonfire was beautiful tonight, dinner was wonderful, and the sky was clear. We even saw a few deer frolicking in the wheat field behind our house. The only annoyance were the State Bird: Mosquitoes. We have them in excess this year due to the undulating night rain storms throughout the last few weeks. Guiltily, we sprayed on our OFF. It seems we've been going through a bottle a week lately, and quite honestly, I feel like crap about it. We've tried more natural methods such as citronella to prevent getting bit, but nothing makes being out in our yard bearable quite like OFF.

Luckily, we saw a few bats flitting around as well. We've decided to get a bat house. I've read that one bat can eat up to 1000 mosquitoes an hour. What a perfect solution. Now, we just need to figure out how to get this new project started. Do any of you have a bat house? Does anyone have some advice for bat house newbies?  We'd appreciate any thoughts, suggestion, or advice that you have for us.