Seeding the Front Lawn

Spring -- time to use peonies as my centre piece

Seeding two arid looking spots on the lawn shouldn’t be that hard.

But I had to back up and do the preparation which turned out to be weed the long line of raspberries (that got no attention last year), rake this year’s cotton wood seeds and last summer’s crushed brown leaves off of the lawn, pick up the small dried sticks from the winter storms that would interfere with the seeding, and take out the grass from the rock wall that surrounds the clump birch.

Now that was a job that required the careful removal of long pieces of quack grass.

And moving the rocks is difficult.

I don’t want to unearth an ant hill with each move. I think I have been influenced by Ria’s visit – the visit of a Buddhist who just tells a spider to be on its way off of our lunch table, or who picks up a beetle from my kitchen counter and places it outside of the house, giving it well wishes on its life’s journey.

I see that the petals are starting to fall from my clematis

Formerly I would have smashed the spider and given the beetle just a flick that it would never have found its way home.

 I was worried what would happen when Ria came to visit.

I knew this was going to be a story like the one that begins, did you hear about the Catholic, the Protestant and the Jew who were in a boat together? In our case I knew it was going to start with, did you hear about the Mormon and the Buddhist who spent 6 days together? I think that the kindness of her Buddhist practise has rubbed off on me.

That is true, all except for killing mice.

They just have to go.

They are a threat to good health.

One way to get rid of them is to find out how they got into my house and then stop them from entering.

Eating Lunch with Ria
Turkey Ceasar
... day a different twist on the turkey Ria cooked ...

Ria reminds me that there is just one thin wall between my dwelling and theirs. That made me laugh.

I have never set a mouse trap before.

I have done the utube video, learning the difference between the regular trap and the supreme trap.

The latter is meant to be used around heavy machinery that vibrates, I guess so that the vibrations won’t set off the trap.

I am glad I didn’t upgrade to that trap and waste $.50.

I wake up every morning hoping that none of the beasties investigated the peanut butter I have used as bait.

I don’t think that the bait counts as much as placing the trap along the sides of the walls, which is where the mice run.

This morning I got my wish: no mice. But yesterday there were two silver bellied creatures in the traps.

I delivered them to a space outside where some other animal will feast on those little carcasses and I go back to setting traps.

Arta