The Marigols this morning.
What a beautiful day! It is cool, cool enough that I am wearing a long sleeve shirt. But not so cool that I feel chilly. Perfect. Another heat wave is on the way, so say the weather people. I suspect they are right, the first week of September often brings hot humid weather.
Today it doesn’t feel as if I have done much. BUT, I must remind myself that this is simply not true.
First of all, I dealt with the dead mice in the trap that I set on the back porch last night. Mice are usually caught at night. When checking the bucket trap this morning, I was surprised to find two deceased mice. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do with them. I settled for flushing them down the toilet. The trap has been reset.
This is the mouse trap on the back porch. Fancy it ain’t! The water is roof runoff, the ramp is a piece of scrap wood from the garage roof project, set from the step to the bucket. The peanut butter is about all I had to invest in this very effective mouse trap. NOTE: no mice in this picture of the trap!
More traps need to be set for tonight, in the garden shed and in the garage. This is the time of year the mice are coming into buildings to setup their winter homes, and I intend to stop as many of them as I can from taking up residence at Mist Cottage.
The barriers we setup around the fenced in yard have been effective for keeping out the rabbits. The squirrels, birds, mice, and cats remain undeterred. This morning I watched the neighbours cat prowling around the fenced in yard, in search of mice. Sometimes he catches a mouse, as he did this last week in our compost pile. Today he had no such luck. He is a fat cat, well fed and loved by his people, so he needn’t catch anything, he is never really hungry. To date he hasn’t caught any birds. I would disapprove of the recreational hunting of our birds.
Another little project that kept me busy this morning was installing a contraption to catch drips under the bathtub drain. It leaks occasionally, and Attila’s adjustments haven’t succeeded in solving the issue. The thing is, that is where my canning supplies reside, right under the bathtub drain, and the leak creates quite a mess. So I decided I wanted some sort of catchment system, to prevent the leaks from reaching my canning equipment.
To that end I purchased a lightweight plastic serving tray from the Dollar Store, and some inexpensive bungee cords. The bungee cords gave off a horrid and overpowering odour when I opened the package, and so have been hanging outside on the clothesline for four or five days. They still smell a little, but nothing like their original stench. The project had to wait for them.
Now, here is where the true enjoyment of the new garage roof comes into play at Mist Cottage. I found old cup hooks for part of the job, but I didn’t have enough and needed nails for my project. Attila has his nails stored in clear plastic peanut butter jars (cleaned of course, labels removed). To find nails of the size I wanted, it was a simple as perusing the shelves along the back wall of the garage, where all the nails are on display. It took only seconds to spy the nails I wanted to use, easily grab the jar, unscrew the lid, take what I needed, put the lid back on, and the return the jar to its place on the shelf. It’s a miracle!! Not once in the last 25 years have I been able to easily find a nail when I needed one. A miracle I say!
I have my own little toolbox underneath the cabinet in the kitchen, so my hammer is exactly where I left it. My list was complete, hammer and nails, plastic tray and bungee cords. The wood on the floor joists, where I wanted to hammer in the nails to attach the ends of the bungee cords, was really, really hard. I dropped and lost one nail down behind the shelving, as I struggle above my head to hammer it in. But it didn’t take long to go out to the garage to replace it, voila! It was a little disturbing that old and dusty debris fell on me every time the hammer hit the nail. I persevered. And eventually the job was done. Now the tray will catch any intermittent drips, and it can easily be taken down and cleaned, if that is ever needed. The drips are bad enough to cause damage to cardboard over time, but not so bad that they will fill the tray to its brim. The water will evaporate away between baths and showers.
This is the drip tray that will catch any of the small but annoying leaks from the bathtub drain. Now I can store my cardboard boxes of mason jars and canning equipment without risk of water damage!
So, that is how I spent most of my day. Of course, I did enjoy sitting in my easy chair, with the windows wide open all day long, writing this entry, crocheting, and contemplating life, the universe, and everything.
And tonight, another lovely Spicy Chicken with Rice and Mixed Vegetable for dinner. I think I will make this with fresh Scarlet Runner Beans from the garden, we have all winter to eat frozen vegetables.
Worldly
Weather
19°C
Date: 2:00 PM EDT Thursday 30 August 2018
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.3 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: 19.0°C
Dew point: 12.7°C
Humidity: 67%
Wind: NNE 12 gust 27 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”
George Bernard Shaw
1856 – 1950
It seems to me this is true of only of those with the means to avoid poverty. No one chooses it. (Well there are a few monks etc. but they aren’t facing starvation.)
