Mouse adventure #2

Yesterday I was planting new tulips in my yard and remembering last year's mouse adventure, when I heard Julia shouting from around the corner. "Mom, help! Help! Chloë's got a mouse, I think. Help!"

I walked over to see what was going on, and both Julia and Chloë, the neighbourhood cat, were staring intently at the leaves on the lawn between our house and the neighbour's. "It's under that leaf. Do you see it?" I looked where Julia was pointing, and Chloë began to slink forward in pounce mode. Images of dead mouse presents left on my front sidewalk impelled me to pounce first, and I grabbed the little critter, but it jumped out of my garden gloves, unseen by the cat. So I pounced again. This time, it squeezed between my thumbs, ran up my sweater's forearm and took a flying leap back into the leaves as Chloë did her best to figure out what was going on. But I had seen where the mouse had hidden, and the third time, I was lucky. I caught the tiny little thing in my gloves and held it until Julia found a five gallon pail in the back yard, and we put our little furry friend into it, away from the cat. Chloë, for her part, was still playing the waiting game called cat and mouse, sniffing around and pouncing on leaves, trying to determine where the mouse had gone.

I'm not a huge mouse fan. I'll just say I'd rather see one scamper away than find one murdered on my front steps. I'm more squeamish that way. Given the choice between cleaning up dead mice and catching lives ones (with garden gloves) I'll take door number two any day.

So that's what happened. We left Chloë thinking she was involved in an intense game of cat and mouse, and we carried the pail into the area park across the street, to set the mouse free under a spruce tree.

 

Goodbye, mouse. Please go live somewhere else -- and stay away
from the one who leaves you as a dead present for my kids!

Labour that leads to a good kind of tired

I was going to sing you another Joan MacIsaac song for Labour Day weekend, but I've run out of time and energy. Yesterday, we went for a three hour bike ride, stopping at a splash park and at DQ for a treatzza pizza so we'd have the energy to get home for a family movie night (Rio, which was cute). And today, I decided it was finally time to do something about compost.

My lovely "Happy Birthday" composter that Lee built somehow managed to become a home for wasps this summer. The exterminator guy had to come twice in August, and after that, the month just got busy with back to school and my mom's big birthday party and work and putting garden stuff away. So today I had a big job ahead of me. Took all afternoon to empty out the composter and relevel it so there would be no wasp hidey holes. Then I had to put everything back where it belonged. But I am so happy to have it in proper working order once again, as there's a lot of stuff to be composted in the next few weeks.

So here's my happy three bin system:

Bin #1 is full of green stuff and kitchen scraps that are compostable,

layered with leaves and a bit of the stuff in Bin #2.

Bin #2 has some partially composted stuff that was in bin #1.

It just needs a little time to get more composty.

Bin #3 is my favourite. It has sifted compost from bin #2 plus 

some well composted stuff that was in the bottom of bin #1.

In a couple of weeks, when most of the harvest is in, I'll be spreading
 this wonderful stuff all over the garden to make the soil happy for next year.

In addition to taking care of all that, I dug some carrots and made some pickles. My wonderful husband made an awesome supper out of veggies and leftovers (he can be very creative) and I took a break and enjoyed the evening on the back step with Chloe, our neighbourhood cat. She's a sweet furry calico girl who loves to cuddle.

All in all, I'd say it was a perfect Labour Day,

with a good, satisfying kind of tired to take me to bed.

The mouse adventure

I was raking the yard this morning, and Suzanna came to me, garden gloves clasped, saying, "I caught a mouse!" It had been running on the street in front of our house, and she decided to save it from Cloë, one of the neighbourhood cats who keeps our mouse population down to a dull roar. When I peeked into Suzanna's hands, this is what I saw:

Suzanna called Julia, and Julia found a shoe box... but the mouse found a hole in the end of it and escaped. The next five minutes were captured on video by Christina... and consisted of Suzanna and the rest of us chasing the tiny little critter around the back yard, then under the fence and into our neighbour's yard, where he was recaptured. The shoe box was replaced with a gardening bucket, and the mouse had no choice but to stay put while we looked him over.

A pretty healthy looking little character. He was offered a piece of apple for a snack, then paraded over to Mikayla's house for show-and-tell, then shown to a dog-walking friend, Brian, and finally, set free in our back yard. "Good bye, Jeremy," said Julia, who names everything.

I guess that since we don't have a cat, Suzanna is our number one mouser!