I have neighbor problems.
It's kind of a dramatic opening sentence, no? But it's true.
It was obvious from the beginning that The Neighbor was a bit on the nosy side, for back when my house was still for sale and when I was looking at the place - he came up and asked...no, questioned... who we were and what we were doing there.
Well, I thought it was pretty self explanatory. There was a "For Sale" sign in the yard. There was a guy wearing a suit standing next to some any old Joe Pye Weed (which is actually the name of a plant, but I'm using it to refer to myself here). The car that Suit was driving had a magnetic sign on the door that said "Remax"...
Well, you get the idea.
So after I bought the place I replaced both of the old sunfaded mismatched wood entry doors and the old wood screen doors that didn't really protect them. I also replaced the old, rotted metal gutter system as well as the old, rotten wood garage door.
And I was happy! It really brightened the place up!
But The Neighbor? Well, he suggested that I paint the place. Not that the place needed paint. Oh, no! He just didn't care for the color. (Brown shingles, creamish/tan walls, white doors and trim.)
I thought to myself...
"Hmmm... You have an all white house with a black roof. You've painted the cement blocks of your basement walls...white... as well as the boards to the deck out back. Your shed is done the same way. You have your enormous white camper, your white Buick Le Sabre, your black Pontiac Bonneville, and your black Volkswagen Beetle. You are obviously The Master of picking out The Right Color. Now please wander back to your own property while I finish planting these Daylilies. They bloom in yellow, red, peach, orange, purple, pink..." :)
I told him I was thinking about painting it green. (I hope he hates green.)
When I unloaded all that mulch I brought home earlier this year, The Neighbor was all over that. He was also very curious about what was being done inside my house when Steve was bringing in the power tools to put in the shower.
ugh.
But now we fast forward to the recent past.
I've mentioned that I've been taking out a lot of the unwanted trees around my house and at the end of my little dead-end road.
Well, The Neighbor? He likes to sit next to his enormous white camper while it's parked in his driveway. His wife joins him there, and they sit and play with their stupid yippy little house-mutt and are happily retired.
But when I was on the ladder with the chainsaw blazing through the tree branch (the one that I was worried might land on the power line), The Neighbor had his chair on the street in front of his camper so he could watch the show.
Well, I'm afraid I had to disappoint him. Like I said... the hard hat worked and the branches all landed where I wanted them to. No Glowing-Chad-Sparking-On-A-Metal-Ladder to entertain him.
Well, he's not easily deterred, so the next time he talked to me he tried to persuade me to remove more trees at the end of my little dead-end road. For clarification purposes, when I say "more" I mean "ALL".
I think he was attempting to get me to think this was somehow my idea, but there's no way in Hello, there that I would ever come up with an idea that stupid on my own.
(Yes, chainsawing a branch that overhangs a power line while standing on a metal extension ladder 30 feet in the air is not an intelligent idea. Just work with me here. It's called "The Willing Suspension of Disbelief")
Again, I thought to myself...
"Hmmm. You'd like to sell your house and move out of the state. So what your saying is that you'd like me to cut down all of the fully grown Oak trees - along with all the volunteer shit - so you can have a clear view of...what? the roof of the bank? For how long? Half a year or so? Perhaps I better set down this pickax lest I get the urge to have me one of those "Fried Green Tomatoes" style barbecues..."
(Laugh here. I would never actually eat my neighbors. Meat that old is probably really tough.)
:)
OK, then. Back to the storyline...
So as I'm clearing out the trees and digging out the roots, I'm either loading the trailer with the branches or I'm burning them in one of the fire pits. (The fire pits are handy like that. They are also much easier to carry around the property than the car and trailer are. Maybe if I were to disconnect the trailer and carry them separately...but who has that kind of time?!)
I've been doing this, now-and-then/here-and-there, ever since I moved into the place 4 years ago. In fact, friends of David and Todd have stopped by and joined me in having a fire and in eating large bowls of ice cream while doing so. David and Todd weren't even home!
The only difference is right now the fire pit is where The Neighbor can see it. (Well...If he's in the camper instead of next to it.) Apparently when The Neighbor can see a fire pit, the RISING smoke drifts downhill and bothers him.
The Neighbor complained about this.
Twice.
Once on each of the last two Saturday's.
(I suspect The Neighbor may have had some ninja training. He can kind of sneak up on a guy. It's a good thing I have an underdeveloped sense of self preservation or he might startle the hell out of me. I hope he shares my notion of "Love Thy Neighbors! Well...don't eat them, anyway.")
The first time was a My Bad. A breeze picked up in the afternoon and I wasn't paying attention to the direction of the smoke path.
Different story last weekend.
When he appeared, he asked why I always had to have a fire going. (Gee, I don't know...maybe because it's Saturday and it's the only day I don't work and for some reason the damn thing doesn't burn out when I keep adding branches?)
I told him I'd just got done grilling. (This was the truth - because I'm like that.) I then apologized and asked him if the smoke was blowing toward his house. He responded (rather gruffly, I might add) that it was...and that I could obviously see that it was...and that he doesn't like wood smoke and that there's city ordinances about having a fire in town.
Odd. I kind of noticed that it was almost a perfectly calm day and what little smoke there was was dissipating about 8 feet above the fire pit. I'm also pretty sure that fire pits are acceptable in our town (if covered) and are able to be used at any time for cooking.
So then.
He doesn't like wood smoke.
That explains quite a bit.
At least I now know why The Neighbor does his camping in his driveway instead of in an actual campground!
Now then... where's that stupid little yippy mutt?
Oh, there you are!
Think you're going to run over and snarl at me, do you?
Come here, you little *insert naughty word. nope - wrong one. THE naughty word. there you go.*
I might not eat thy neighbor, but a little barbeque sauce on you might...
:)
Friday, July 30, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Sticky
Another storm is moving into the area.
The rain is pelting the air conditioner and making as much noise as it does when it hits the roof of a tin shed. The lightning flashes light up the surrounding buildings and landscape in brief moments of almost daylight brightness. The radio announcer is on and saying that the severe weather has crossed into MN from SD and he's giving out all the same "take precautionary measures" advice that he's said every weekend since I took the Lincoln out of storage 4 weeks ago.
Well, hopefully the vehicle makes it through yet another storm without taking any hail damage. It's at the mechanic's so that some thingamajig that's stuck inside the doohickey can hopefully be freed without breaking the gizmo... well, it isn't running quite right.
But I wasn't planning to blog today about my car problems.
(I might do that after they get fixed...)
So let's get to the story already, shall we?
It's about Dangit. (my cat)
I'm pleased to say that I have not caught a mouse inside the house since I put out all the traps I mentioned in the last post. Dangit caught at least one on one of his nighttime prowls, and I did get a couple in one of the live traps out in the garage, but that doesn't matter here.
What matters is... and pay attention if you have a cat... do NOT forget to close the door to block the cat from entering any rooms that have a glue trap.
Yup. You guessed it. He stepped on one.
And then he freaked because it stuck to his foot and lifted off the ground when he tried to move. He immediately began to try to shake it off, which slapped the trap along the side of his leg and also caught part of his tail.
And damn! That is some tough stuff! All of his actions took place in a matter of seconds, but to try to pry him loose wasn't nearly as quick. I seriously wondered if I wasn't pulling all the hair out and leaving him with big bald spots.
So after the cat was free from the glue trap, I realized I had a problem. Namely... he had glue all over his leg and more on his tail. Well, I've never had to be the fix-it-up chappy for something like this, so even though cats are supposed to hate water I decided to stick him in the sink and see if a little soapy water would eat off the glue.
Nope.
So then, the cat and I, we took a shower. By now I have quite a lot of glue... and cat hair... stuck to me - and I'm still doing my best to clean the cat.
Well, showering with a cat actually went way better than I anticipated. I think he may have understood that I was trying to help him... or maybe I misread him and the look he was trying for was, "If I still had claws I would use them to remove your eyeballs." Either way I think we did a really good job of getting him cleaned up. He's probably high from eating glue while he cleaned himself, but at least he's clean enough to be in the house during the rain we're currently getting.
If it clears up tomorrow the trees should pull easier, and if it doesn't I still have to paint the bathroom. (and clean glue out of the sink and shower) I went with plain white for the ceiling and a green for the walls.
"Koala Bear" is what the color is called. And like I said, it's a shade of green. I always think of Koala's as being a khaki/tan color. Guess i was wrong on that!
dirty koala bears... :)
The rain is pelting the air conditioner and making as much noise as it does when it hits the roof of a tin shed. The lightning flashes light up the surrounding buildings and landscape in brief moments of almost daylight brightness. The radio announcer is on and saying that the severe weather has crossed into MN from SD and he's giving out all the same "take precautionary measures" advice that he's said every weekend since I took the Lincoln out of storage 4 weeks ago.
Well, hopefully the vehicle makes it through yet another storm without taking any hail damage. It's at the mechanic's so that some thingamajig that's stuck inside the doohickey can hopefully be freed without breaking the gizmo... well, it isn't running quite right.
But I wasn't planning to blog today about my car problems.
(I might do that after they get fixed...)
So let's get to the story already, shall we?
It's about Dangit. (my cat)
I'm pleased to say that I have not caught a mouse inside the house since I put out all the traps I mentioned in the last post. Dangit caught at least one on one of his nighttime prowls, and I did get a couple in one of the live traps out in the garage, but that doesn't matter here.
What matters is... and pay attention if you have a cat... do NOT forget to close the door to block the cat from entering any rooms that have a glue trap.
Yup. You guessed it. He stepped on one.
And then he freaked because it stuck to his foot and lifted off the ground when he tried to move. He immediately began to try to shake it off, which slapped the trap along the side of his leg and also caught part of his tail.
And damn! That is some tough stuff! All of his actions took place in a matter of seconds, but to try to pry him loose wasn't nearly as quick. I seriously wondered if I wasn't pulling all the hair out and leaving him with big bald spots.
So after the cat was free from the glue trap, I realized I had a problem. Namely... he had glue all over his leg and more on his tail. Well, I've never had to be the fix-it-up chappy for something like this, so even though cats are supposed to hate water I decided to stick him in the sink and see if a little soapy water would eat off the glue.
Nope.
So then, the cat and I, we took a shower. By now I have quite a lot of glue... and cat hair... stuck to me - and I'm still doing my best to clean the cat.
Well, showering with a cat actually went way better than I anticipated. I think he may have understood that I was trying to help him... or maybe I misread him and the look he was trying for was, "If I still had claws I would use them to remove your eyeballs." Either way I think we did a really good job of getting him cleaned up. He's probably high from eating glue while he cleaned himself, but at least he's clean enough to be in the house during the rain we're currently getting.
If it clears up tomorrow the trees should pull easier, and if it doesn't I still have to paint the bathroom. (and clean glue out of the sink and shower) I went with plain white for the ceiling and a green for the walls.
"Koala Bear" is what the color is called. And like I said, it's a shade of green. I always think of Koala's as being a khaki/tan color. Guess i was wrong on that!
dirty koala bears... :)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
The Jungle
I had these grand plans to get up early and get a lot of yard work accomplished today. (This term being loosely applied. Although I have the smallest house and it's tucked away at the end of the dead-end street, I'm still the primary landowner for the three houses on the block. However, very little of that land would actually be considered "yard".)
I even followed through with the part where I got up early - and I even went right to the work part.
We hauled out 3 loads of branches last weekend and I'm really pleased with how things are looking. 3 or 4 dead trees that I didn't even know were in there were removed, as well as that big half-dead tree that was next to the house. (Sure am glad I found that hard hat along the road one time. It worked. But I seem to have misplaced the gloves I found like those that highwire techs use, so thankfully the branches fell where I wanted them to.) We also took out a couple of the other trees that were not looking very healthy or were growing all weird and blocking the younger, more desirable volunteer trees from growing straight...and a whole lot of the smaller not-quite-lilac-or-flowering-crab trees that were either in the way, ugly, or busted all to shit after the big trees fell on them.
But today it's just me. As of yesterday the kids are at their mom's for the second half of summer.
(She sent a text message that read, "Did you really tell David that he couldn't bring a couple extra pairs of shorts/jeans with? All I have that fit him here are some pjs." ...or something really close to that. I had several immediate responses to that. One was, "Perhaps you'd like to take some of that $5,000 or so you now owe me for past medical and go buy him some instead of supplying your unemployed douchebag with cigarettes...oh, and by the way - Todd needs braces." Another was, "David and I now wear the same size. Perhaps David and unemployed douchebag also wear the same size. Then, at least, unemployed douchebag would finally be contributing something!" And of course, there was the "Oh...phkkng-drop-ded-u-dum-btch!" So many choices. I just couldn't decide which to send back! Instead, I let him take a couple pairs of shorts that had some damage but still looked nice.)
So, it's 8:30 AM today and there's no breeze to speak of and I have to pause now and then from swinging the pickax to dig out roots so I can wipe off the sweat that's dripped onto my glasses.
Then it's 9:30 or so and I've been working on the same small section all morning and am pleased with how things are looking, but would like to speed the process up a bit. I look at the stump sticking out from between the rock crevice it's lodged in . It's sprouted a lot of new growth even though I just cut the damn thing off last weekend. I think it even shot out some new leaves while I was swinging the pickax as it braced it's roots into the rock so I couldn't get at them.
It was becoming a bit of power struggle and I wasn't winning.
So, despite that I know this is NOT something you do with your car... I hooked up the tow strap and enjoyed the instant gratification that might lead to trying it again, and again, and so on until the transmission is wrecked.
I figured I should ponder on that a while, so I did. And it wasn't getting any cooler, and there still was no breeze, and my 64oz mixture of Diet Dew and blue slushy from SA was empty, and the little red light that tells me that I haven't been paying attention to the gas gauge was lit up when I backed up to the tree... so I retrieved the mug and off to the gas station I went.
I pull up to the pump, get out, set the mug on the roof, and am about to grab the nozzle when a voice from another vehicle says, "Excuse me, sir? You're pulling a tow strap."
Oops. Better get out of the heat for a while. ;)
I even followed through with the part where I got up early - and I even went right to the work part.
We hauled out 3 loads of branches last weekend and I'm really pleased with how things are looking. 3 or 4 dead trees that I didn't even know were in there were removed, as well as that big half-dead tree that was next to the house. (Sure am glad I found that hard hat along the road one time. It worked. But I seem to have misplaced the gloves I found like those that highwire techs use, so thankfully the branches fell where I wanted them to.) We also took out a couple of the other trees that were not looking very healthy or were growing all weird and blocking the younger, more desirable volunteer trees from growing straight...and a whole lot of the smaller not-quite-lilac-or-flowering-crab trees that were either in the way, ugly, or busted all to shit after the big trees fell on them.
But today it's just me. As of yesterday the kids are at their mom's for the second half of summer.
(She sent a text message that read, "Did you really tell David that he couldn't bring a couple extra pairs of shorts/jeans with? All I have that fit him here are some pjs." ...or something really close to that. I had several immediate responses to that. One was, "Perhaps you'd like to take some of that $5,000 or so you now owe me for past medical and go buy him some instead of supplying your unemployed douchebag with cigarettes...oh, and by the way - Todd needs braces." Another was, "David and I now wear the same size. Perhaps David and unemployed douchebag also wear the same size. Then, at least, unemployed douchebag would finally be contributing something!" And of course, there was the "Oh...phkkng-drop-ded-u-dum-btch!" So many choices. I just couldn't decide which to send back! Instead, I let him take a couple pairs of shorts that had some damage but still looked nice.)
So, it's 8:30 AM today and there's no breeze to speak of and I have to pause now and then from swinging the pickax to dig out roots so I can wipe off the sweat that's dripped onto my glasses.
Then it's 9:30 or so and I've been working on the same small section all morning and am pleased with how things are looking, but would like to speed the process up a bit. I look at the stump sticking out from between the rock crevice it's lodged in . It's sprouted a lot of new growth even though I just cut the damn thing off last weekend. I think it even shot out some new leaves while I was swinging the pickax as it braced it's roots into the rock so I couldn't get at them.
It was becoming a bit of power struggle and I wasn't winning.
So, despite that I know this is NOT something you do with your car... I hooked up the tow strap and enjoyed the instant gratification that might lead to trying it again, and again, and so on until the transmission is wrecked.
I figured I should ponder on that a while, so I did. And it wasn't getting any cooler, and there still was no breeze, and my 64oz mixture of Diet Dew and blue slushy from SA was empty, and the little red light that tells me that I haven't been paying attention to the gas gauge was lit up when I backed up to the tree... so I retrieved the mug and off to the gas station I went.
I pull up to the pump, get out, set the mug on the roof, and am about to grab the nozzle when a voice from another vehicle says, "Excuse me, sir? You're pulling a tow strap."
Oops. Better get out of the heat for a while. ;)
Friday, July 9, 2010
yellow black yellow black yellow black
Ever had one of those work days that seem to drag on a bit longer than necessary?
I'm working the PM spot this week as the PM Supe is on vacation. I really enjoy the PM crew and we get along great, so the week has flown by... but woe is me, there was an upgrade scheduled for the portable computers the drivers use - and it always takes longer than the time it says it should take and involves at least one call to the company's tech support group.
So now I'm sitting here, waiting for "the next available representative" to take my call.
It's the last step of the installation and there's only one left to complete. I've sat here for over an hour while all of the other Data Information Acquiring Devices chirped and beeped and completed the upgrade like good little troopers, but they're all the newest version of this style Hand Held Terminal - and the one that's being bucky is Version 3 (the previous version).
So as I patiently waited for all of the other HHT's to complete the upgrade, the computer screen that displays their status had them all flashing from yellow to black to yellow to black (and so on) except for the DIAD3... who just sat there mocking me while the little square representing it on the computer screen remained a solid green.
But what's a guy to do? I locked the building up for the weekend and completed everything else work related that needed to be done. I checked the other blogs and saw Connie's is the only one that's been recently updated. I inspected my $125 Nike ZoomVomero3 running shoes and am quite pleased with myself for having worn off the grips on the bottoms and blown out the sides and lacerated the breathable mesh at least 7 times - and probably still haven't ran in them for over a mile in total combined running time.
There's a stain on the toe section of the right shoe. It's been there a while. I don't even remember what it's from but suspect it's probably chainsaw oil from last summer...
Ah! What is this? The call was a success! Version 3 is chirping away in the charging rack outside the office door! Now the download begins! (yellow black yellow black...)
... where was I?
Oh yeah. Chainsaw oil on shoe. And speaking of chainsaws, I need another one. The one I have is in great shape. It starts fine and runs fine and all that... but I have trees to remove and it's nice to have the extra one available to cut out the first one when the tree makes an unexpected shift and the blade gets stuck. (If you say you've never left a chainsaw sticking sideways out of a tree trunk while retrieving the back-up, you've either never used a chainsaw for any length of time, or you're lying.)
I like trees, and it pains me to have to cut them down, but the woods are storming my castle. Not exactly the same way Shakespeare's woods did (which would be significantly cooler) but you get the idea.
I've finally cleared the vegetation behind the house enough to walk all the way around it without pushing branches to the side, but I still have a long way to go and it's overdue in getting done. A couple of years ago, a few friends came over and we took out a number of the larger trees that could've posed a threat of root damage to the foundation of the house. The trunk of one of them was loaded with carpenter ants, and recently I've had some carpenter ants show up inside the house, so I suspect there's a nest...or swarm...or hive...or colony...or an Ant's Anonymous meeting ...taking place in the half-dead tree on the side of my garage. (Of course, the power line to the house also had to be right there.)
And there's other wildlife that's been trying to enjoy the comfort of being indoors.
(My blog. I can start a sentence with "and" if I want to. So there.)
Back when I put up the new gutters, a squirrel sat in the back gutter and burrowed his way through the facia board and into the garage. Thankfully there were no further unauthorized entry attempts made by this squirrel after I patched the hole - with tin - as I'm not sure how to operate the live trap a guy at work gave me. (For the squirrel's sake, that is. My next attempt would have been to put a piece of metal on either side of the hole that the squirrel would have had to squeeze between. I would've then hooked up the cables, turned the knob to "jump start", and fried the little rat-bastard the next time it came in.)
I recently arranged the garage again. (Bought Todd a new bike. Between the bikes and yard equipment it was getting hard to navigate the maze.) Plus, the next day a friend and I would be ripping out my shower, walls, and floor because the people that installed it wanted to save the extra $20 it would cost to use the right sheetrock under the tile. I was also arranging the garage for tool-usage space in case in case of rain.
As I was finishing up for the night, a mouse ran along the concrete ledge below the garage window. It stopped when it was even with me and looked me over. Well, I'm not one for having mice in the house - but it wasn't in the house - so I did the same in return.
I suppose we hung out there for about 15 minutes. It's little ears would perk up when I talked to it. It waited patiently while I dug out my phone and figured out how to zoom in. It wasn't at all bothered when I decided I didn't like the way the picture turned out and took the next picture with the camera held about 6 inches from it. Nope, it even waited for me to walk outside the garage door and bring in the cat. It calmly sat there with it's ears perking up as I talked to the cat, like so... "It's right phucking there! What the hell are you looking at?!" ...and then it started to feel sorry for me and my futile attempts to get the cat to understand that there was a motionless mouse right in front of where it was being held, so it helped me out by moving to get the cat's attention. (Down into the cinder blocks.)
Yup. Cute little thing. I don't know why people are so scared of them.
But like I said, I don't want 'em in the house... so I set 8 glue traps, 3 live traps, and 5 "snap" traps. Blech. There's NEVER just one mouse so I've had some luck...if you'd call it that. (No poison. Don't want dead mice stinking to high hell in the humid heat somewhere in a wall.)
Besides the whole new shower set-up and getting the garage in order, I've been busy outside as well. My spare firepit is about to become my primary firepit. My old one saw a lot of use while I knocked back the shrubbery (Monte Python would be proud) with the old hand scythe like some Crocodile Dundee bushman, or Chainsaw Massacred my way through the Living Dead trees. The last time I emptied the ashes there was daylight showing through a few spots.
I had my first visit from a vandal since moving here. This person broke solar lighting on both sides of the path and smashed the glass to a seperate solar light closer to the patio. They also, um...moved?...the marble gazing ball I had in the back part of the property. (Not sure if it got stolen or rolled down the hill somewhere.)
I'll admit that I find this a bit annoying. I can more-or-less fix the path lights and have 5 more of the solar lights like the one that got smashed that have never been put in the ground. I even have a spare marble gazing ball that's never been taken out of the box. But I shouldn't have to replace this stuff.
If it happens again I might have to Gladiator/300 someone with my Garden Claw Red. ;)
Oh, and I picked up one of those Mantis garden tillers like you see on TV. 4-cycle Honda engine, lightweight, and handy as can be for areas you can't get at with a rear-tine tiller. It's the more expensive version, but if you've thought about getting one I'd say you wouldn't have buyers remorse after doing so! (This promotional statement not authorized or paid for by any political candidate or the makers of motorized yard equipment, or their affiliates. Cheap bastards.) :)
I'm working the PM spot this week as the PM Supe is on vacation. I really enjoy the PM crew and we get along great, so the week has flown by... but woe is me, there was an upgrade scheduled for the portable computers the drivers use - and it always takes longer than the time it says it should take and involves at least one call to the company's tech support group.
So now I'm sitting here, waiting for "the next available representative" to take my call.
It's the last step of the installation and there's only one left to complete. I've sat here for over an hour while all of the other Data Information Acquiring Devices chirped and beeped and completed the upgrade like good little troopers, but they're all the newest version of this style Hand Held Terminal - and the one that's being bucky is Version 3 (the previous version).
So as I patiently waited for all of the other HHT's to complete the upgrade, the computer screen that displays their status had them all flashing from yellow to black to yellow to black (and so on) except for the DIAD3... who just sat there mocking me while the little square representing it on the computer screen remained a solid green.
But what's a guy to do? I locked the building up for the weekend and completed everything else work related that needed to be done. I checked the other blogs and saw Connie's is the only one that's been recently updated. I inspected my $125 Nike ZoomVomero3 running shoes and am quite pleased with myself for having worn off the grips on the bottoms and blown out the sides and lacerated the breathable mesh at least 7 times - and probably still haven't ran in them for over a mile in total combined running time.
There's a stain on the toe section of the right shoe. It's been there a while. I don't even remember what it's from but suspect it's probably chainsaw oil from last summer...
Ah! What is this? The call was a success! Version 3 is chirping away in the charging rack outside the office door! Now the download begins! (yellow black yellow black...)
... where was I?
Oh yeah. Chainsaw oil on shoe. And speaking of chainsaws, I need another one. The one I have is in great shape. It starts fine and runs fine and all that... but I have trees to remove and it's nice to have the extra one available to cut out the first one when the tree makes an unexpected shift and the blade gets stuck. (If you say you've never left a chainsaw sticking sideways out of a tree trunk while retrieving the back-up, you've either never used a chainsaw for any length of time, or you're lying.)
I like trees, and it pains me to have to cut them down, but the woods are storming my castle. Not exactly the same way Shakespeare's woods did (which would be significantly cooler) but you get the idea.
I've finally cleared the vegetation behind the house enough to walk all the way around it without pushing branches to the side, but I still have a long way to go and it's overdue in getting done. A couple of years ago, a few friends came over and we took out a number of the larger trees that could've posed a threat of root damage to the foundation of the house. The trunk of one of them was loaded with carpenter ants, and recently I've had some carpenter ants show up inside the house, so I suspect there's a nest...or swarm...or hive...or colony...or an Ant's Anonymous meeting ...taking place in the half-dead tree on the side of my garage. (Of course, the power line to the house also had to be right there.)
And there's other wildlife that's been trying to enjoy the comfort of being indoors.
(My blog. I can start a sentence with "and" if I want to. So there.)
Back when I put up the new gutters, a squirrel sat in the back gutter and burrowed his way through the facia board and into the garage. Thankfully there were no further unauthorized entry attempts made by this squirrel after I patched the hole - with tin - as I'm not sure how to operate the live trap a guy at work gave me. (For the squirrel's sake, that is. My next attempt would have been to put a piece of metal on either side of the hole that the squirrel would have had to squeeze between. I would've then hooked up the cables, turned the knob to "jump start", and fried the little rat-bastard the next time it came in.)
I recently arranged the garage again. (Bought Todd a new bike. Between the bikes and yard equipment it was getting hard to navigate the maze.) Plus, the next day a friend and I would be ripping out my shower, walls, and floor because the people that installed it wanted to save the extra $20 it would cost to use the right sheetrock under the tile. I was also arranging the garage for tool-usage space in case in case of rain.
As I was finishing up for the night, a mouse ran along the concrete ledge below the garage window. It stopped when it was even with me and looked me over. Well, I'm not one for having mice in the house - but it wasn't in the house - so I did the same in return.
I suppose we hung out there for about 15 minutes. It's little ears would perk up when I talked to it. It waited patiently while I dug out my phone and figured out how to zoom in. It wasn't at all bothered when I decided I didn't like the way the picture turned out and took the next picture with the camera held about 6 inches from it. Nope, it even waited for me to walk outside the garage door and bring in the cat. It calmly sat there with it's ears perking up as I talked to the cat, like so... "It's right phucking there! What the hell are you looking at?!" ...and then it started to feel sorry for me and my futile attempts to get the cat to understand that there was a motionless mouse right in front of where it was being held, so it helped me out by moving to get the cat's attention. (Down into the cinder blocks.)
Yup. Cute little thing. I don't know why people are so scared of them.
But like I said, I don't want 'em in the house... so I set 8 glue traps, 3 live traps, and 5 "snap" traps. Blech. There's NEVER just one mouse so I've had some luck...if you'd call it that. (No poison. Don't want dead mice stinking to high hell in the humid heat somewhere in a wall.)
Besides the whole new shower set-up and getting the garage in order, I've been busy outside as well. My spare firepit is about to become my primary firepit. My old one saw a lot of use while I knocked back the shrubbery (Monte Python would be proud) with the old hand scythe like some Crocodile Dundee bushman, or Chainsaw Massacred my way through the Living Dead trees. The last time I emptied the ashes there was daylight showing through a few spots.
I had my first visit from a vandal since moving here. This person broke solar lighting on both sides of the path and smashed the glass to a seperate solar light closer to the patio. They also, um...moved?...the marble gazing ball I had in the back part of the property. (Not sure if it got stolen or rolled down the hill somewhere.)
I'll admit that I find this a bit annoying. I can more-or-less fix the path lights and have 5 more of the solar lights like the one that got smashed that have never been put in the ground. I even have a spare marble gazing ball that's never been taken out of the box. But I shouldn't have to replace this stuff.
If it happens again I might have to Gladiator/300 someone with my Garden Claw Red. ;)
Oh, and I picked up one of those Mantis garden tillers like you see on TV. 4-cycle Honda engine, lightweight, and handy as can be for areas you can't get at with a rear-tine tiller. It's the more expensive version, but if you've thought about getting one I'd say you wouldn't have buyers remorse after doing so! (This promotional statement not authorized or paid for by any political candidate or the makers of motorized yard equipment, or their affiliates. Cheap bastards.) :)
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