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Shed by trees and strewn around the garden’s beds and paths, last winter’s twigs would have filled a mattress.
Those I gathered this afternoon certainly occupied the best part of one of our orange bags of ‘green’ refuse destined for the recycling centre.
Father Christmas was generous with hose this year. Even so, my sock drawer gradually became surprisingly full to overflowing. Jackie’s, however, was rapidly emptying. Eventually she realised that I had been mistaking hers for mine.
I really have no claim on these.
Also shown here are the cast iron fireplace and the wooden surround still awaiting final fixing. The copper fender was a present from our son and daughter, so must be accommodated. The blue tiles were already in situ. Whilst the laminate flooring is quite good quality, if you like that sort of thing, it has been appallingly fitted and we really would like to see the back of it. That, of course, would require lifting it to reveal what we hope will be the original floorboards. With any luck these will not have been butchered. Fingers crossed.
Readers will remember that, hands flattened on our kitchen window, bewhiskered nose twitching, an amiable rat peered longingly at our Christmas dinner. Some time after that Jackie discovered holes in the birdseed on the utility room shelf; later still, she heard rustling. It was time to put down bait. On a daily basis, the poisoned seed was disturbed in the morning. Either our visitor deserved the name Rasputin allocated to him, or his whole family had followed, or come to look for him when he didn’t return.
We were rather sad when, today, we discovered an undisturbed pile of bait.
This evening we dined on starters of prawn toasts and spring rolls from Tesco; Jackie’s sublime egg fried rice; and Lidl’s tender oriental pork. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank San Adres Chilean merlot.
Oh Rasputin …. le pauvre. Sadly though there are those with whom it is just not possible to coexist. Your laminate floor will give me nightmares of our house in Marcolès (work in progress) which sported laminate floor on the walls …. I had just about come through that chapter, with intensive counselling and the aid of plenteous fermented grapes but now I’m back to square one 😉
Arrgh. Thanks, Osyth
funny
Thank heavens for wine is all I can say Jodie!!
Thank heavens, indeed.
I too did battle with the twigs today, but have long ago solved the sock issue by moving mine to a secret location…what a thing to have to hide from one’s wife. 🙂 Looking forward to seeing more of the garden as it grows.
Thanks a lot Oglach
We have pack rats. They climb up into the car carriage and eat the wires. They are smart things!
Thanks, Cindy
You should have called your window peeper Yoric, then ‘Alas’ might have been quoted over the undisturbed pile………
🙂 Thanks a lot, Pauline
LOL! I’m laughing at Pauline’s comment…”the window peeper.”
Thanks a lot, Jill
Too funny…the battle with the rat…we had a family of field mice…my husband said there was only one…when is there only one(?!)…the two cats made short work of the lot…of course tiny mouse feet dangling from cat mouths causes quite the disturbance at breakfast. 🙂
I don’t think there is ever only one, Doodle. Thanks very much.
Love the socks!
Thanks, :Lynn
I have been watching the posts the last few days and thinking . . . and so it begins . . . I was referring to the garden maintenance, rather than the new beginnings for your rat family in their ever-after life. Poor things. They make quite nice pets in the right environment I am told. My brother had a white one called Herman. I still have the letter he wrote our Auntie to say it had run away (to join the circus perhaps?). Good luck with the floorboards. It should look good if they are sound – but what about the height of your doors? Have they been trimmed down to accommodate the laminate flooring?
Wow – very good thought about the doors being too short. You must have been through this before, GG.
Worked in logistics. Some things you learn the hard way.
Our children have kept many generations of rats – sometimes in large quantities :). What a good thought about the doors. There is only one, but it probably has been trimmed. Thanks, Gwen
Hmmm well there are ways around it. A d Ep weather shield is a starting point
Blessed iPad. A deep weather shield that was meant to read. Might look a bit patchwork, but it would do the job while you considered the next move.
🙂
Oh woe, reminds me of a midnight rat we had last year in our wall behind the shower. He would scratch late at night and keep us from sleeping ( and drove the cats crazy). Thommmee finally got under the house with several traps and about a week later alas… his little life came to an end ( for which I was very grateful).
Thanks a lot Mommer
I like the copper against the blue of the fireplace. Good luck with the flooring. We put down laminate in our kitchen, but there was nothing nice underneath. When we first moved in, the whole kitchen was covered in green indoor/outdoor carpet. Hideous!
Poor Rasputin, but I’d freak out if there was a rat here. We’ve had mice, but that’s it, and the cats have caught them–though that’s not fun to see.
Many thanks, Merril. Laminate makes sense in a kitchen, where we have tiles. Neighbours’ cats patrol our garden
Perhaps the rats were escaping the cats in the garden. 🙂 Our cats are strictly indoors.
Given the missing rat I would have sampled Lidl’s tender oriental pork with a great deal of care.
It didn’t contain any tail long noodles 🙂 Thanks Bruce.
!!!
Rasputin! What a clever name.
Jackie’s of course, Leslie. 🙂 Thank you.
Glad the rat’s gone. Of course, they may all be holed up somewhere with indigestion. Let’s hope not.
I’m sure we haven’t seen the last, Lisa. Thanks
I loved the part about the sock drawer. That’s just the sort of thing I can imagine happening in our home too.
Thanks very much, Bun
Ah! Never mess with the Tsar in situ! Didn’t realise a fireplace could present such quandaries.
Thanks, Uma. The Tsar sorted the rats
How handy that you can share socks–I’ll keep this in mind when one or more of mine go missing. That rat–well, no sadness here when they mingle with humans; as I am rat phobic…
Thanks a lot, Cynthia
Only yesterday I was discussing rats & things with Mike Rendell, aka The Georgian Gentleman.
Perhaps you should call upon the services of The Georgian Gentleman’s friend, been catching all sorts of nasty things for 320 years or more; sure a few rats wouldn’t faze him!
Thank very much, Brian. Although we never saw who was nicking the bait, we do miss him 🙂
I am morbidly afraid of anything rodent. We had one living in our storage room for awhile but Monkey (cat) caught him and took him outside. I thought we were done with them until the second snowfall a few weeks ago. A bag of cans and bottles somehow made it out back and has been chewed through with a couple of water bottles strewn around.
Thanks, Lydia. Hope the post didn’t upset you. You may like to skip today’s later on
No, it didn’t actually. I am getting better and I kinda felt for you all when he hadn’t been around. Maybe I am getting better!
That’s good. 🙂
I love pet rats, so it’s very distressing when wild rats go where they aren’t wanted and where it can be dangerous (into wiring and so on).
Many thanks, Luanne
On the rats, cats work quite well!
On the floorboards, my advice would be to prise up the sticky-outy one and investigate underneath before undertaking anything rash. It needs a bit snipped off the end, anyway, to force it into line.
Thanks a lot, Leslie