Wednesday 5 September 2018

Getting Things Done Last Week

What a difference some new vinyl has made to the upstairs shower room. The floor was  a pale wood laminate and had worn away in places and lost its colour, so that it never looked clean.

The fitters measured up my bedroom after they'd laid the vinyl and decided what needed to be done to level up the corner where the shower came out of and thankfully took away the old carpet so that I could finish sanding and painting the skirting board.
I'm so pleased that everything upstairs will soon be finished (well, apart from the boxing in of the pipes in the bathroom which will be done sometime this month) makes it feel that I'm actually getting somewhere with the updating. All the work now will be downstairs which I'm not looking forward to. Workmen too close for comfort!!

Now the weather is cooler there is much to be done outside and I emptied the small compost bin onto the cutting garden and planted out the Alstromeria plants that have been sitting in pots all summer. Way back in June I ordered some mini plug plants of Hollyhocks and they finally turned up last week. They've been potted up now and will later go in the third quarter of the cut flower bed. But how frustrating to find out about a month  ago that next door neighbour has grown lots from seed to sell! She is raising money to replace a memorial bench but I only found out that she had Hollyhocks when I was doing the watering for them when they were away. I've managed to do some weeding in the front flower beds but the quarter circle garden behind the house is an awful mess and needs a lot of work as do the veg beds.

As they nearly say on TV  "the next programme paragraph contains pictures words that some readers may find offensive!"

Had a nasty shock one morning last week when I noticed a rat under the bird feeders. Spotting a rat in daylight means there are probably several more around. This is the time of year when rats move off the fields closer to homes and the time to set bait boxes. OK, I knew where the rat bait was but where on earth was the bait box. Last seen in the spring when Colin was ill and told me to fill it with bait and put it on top of the compost heap because he thought there were rats digging their way in under the compost bins. Surely the bait box isn't  buried somewhere deep in the compost bin? I've looked everywhere else but if it is in the bin it will be impossible to find until the bin is emptied next year. So a trip to the local hardware store and a new box bought and filled and covered with a tile to keep the rain off. DIE RATS! I shall stop feeding the birds for a few days so there is nothing on the ground for the rats, hopefully they will take the bait.

After 3 busy days of getting things done earlier last week  by Thursday I felt shattered, so had two days  pottering around at home and  going nowhere. I just did a little weeding but without feeling pressured to rush and get as much done as possible. I seem to be trying to keep busy...... going here, there and everywhere which is totally different to the way I used to live when most of my time was spent at home on the smallholding. Somehow I have to find a happy medium.

The two quiet days revived me so on Saturday it was back to a bit more garden clearing, and after buying a bag of multi-purpose and some late pansies I tipped out dead petunias and re-planted some patio pots for a bit of late colour. One veg bed is half full of Iceland poppy seedlings - more like a small forest really and definitely not wanted there so I covered them with black plastic - hopefully when I uncover in the spring they'll all be gone.

Almost a year ago when Col's treatment seemed to be working he bought a small poly-tunnel on line. He'd been looking and found a company who were clearing out their last tunnels and reducing the price so he jumped in and got it . When  it arrived it was put in the workshop and there it stayed because sadly he was then not well enough to even open the box. Eventually last month I got round to placing an ad in the Suffolk Smallholders Society newsletter and had 2 phone calls on Saturday and sold it to the first caller for £60. A very useful addition to the purse for September.

I'm still clearing and sorting a little something everyday. Last week another bag of books went into the car ready for a charity shop and  2 small boxes of books were sent off to Ziffit. The seed tin was sorted, old seeds chucked and unopened seeds that I'll never use have been bundled up for the car boot box. A couple of things from the garage into the dustbin. A bundle of old Self-Sufficiency magazines that have moved house umpteen times are going off to the Smallholders Society AGM. It does feel good to clear and sort.

Many thanks for comments and new visitors and hello and welcome to a couple more new followers.

Back Tomorrow
Sue


29 comments:

  1. Urgh, rats. I'm on your side on that one, Sue. Horrid things. Mind you, I like squirrels and they are only rats with furry tails!
    Who said we have to be consistent! :-)
    xx

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    1. Squirrels are definitely more appealing - just wish they didn't pinch all the hazelnuts and bite their way through the bird feeders!

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  2. I feel for you with rats, we have them coming into the bottom of our garden, our troublesome neighbour won't set bait traps. Our council agrees the cats are the attraction for the rats, they go under the summer house (home for the cats) and eat all the dried food falling below and then carry along into our garden.

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    1. Blinkin' rats haven't touched the rat bait yet

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  3. Hi. Have you tried the crime series of books by Elly Griffiths? Really enjoyable and best read from the start of the series. Not sure if you can reserve books from mobile library? The Fantastic Fiction website will give you info about the chronological order of books by authors and is worth a look.

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    1. Hello, you must be a new visitor here or you would know that I love the Elly Griffiths books - both series and have read them all and often mention Fantastic Fiction for finding book sequences. I order online and collect from the mobile library every 4 weeks, suits me better than going to a local library which has odd hours

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  4. Feel for you. We had them in day light, in our garden last year and had to stop feeding the birds and leaving out water too. Thank you for your blog Sue.

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  5. Sorry about the rats Sue my daughter moved last year and she has a lots of problems with rats.
    You are certainly keeping your self busy. Do you have hobbies like knitting? I have just bought a jigsaw puzzle at the charity shop. Hazel c uk

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  6. The ho me laid rat boxes stopped working for me and eventually had to get professional rat man in which worked but have to be down all the time, he was dead against feeding the birds! Rats in compost seem inevitable, any veg matter seems to draw them, you would think last winter would have finished them off. Sarah D.

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  7. Ugh.....rats give me the heebie jeebies. We had one in our garden last year but thankfully managed to see it off.
    Hugs-x-

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  8. Hope you manage to see the rats off. I looked out of the window once and we had one swinging from the bird feeder having a right old feast. I'm not as kind as you though because all bird seed was removed and I've never fed the birds again. xx

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    1. I totally agree, it does settle , but you seem to need to go. ‘round the circle ‘ of doing too much and getting shattered and then total rest . Just another way of coping with grief xxx

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  9. When I first lost my partner, after the initial shock, I too kept myself very busy. I seemed to be rushing here, there and everywhere, but without consciously planning to have such a full diary. This, what I assume was a sort of coping strategy, eventually settled down after about 18 months. I've noticed the same pattern of behaviour in a couple of friends who lost their other halves.

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    1. Oooops I have replied to the wrong person , hopefully people will work it out !

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  10. No one in this country is very far from a rat - they just don't know it. I spot them all the time in our town - scurrying under litter bins and in council landscaping - so many people feed the pigeons down there and drop their chips and take out pasties on the ground it is inevitable. A lot of councils now are removing their shrubs and just putting bark down in their place to try and halt the problem.
    My friend had them underneath her new house too.
    We built our large compost bins in Scotland on a concrete base and they have well fitting lids so we don't get rats in there. The pub up the lane is our source of rats they never close the lids tightly on their business bins - you can often see them scrambling up into them at night and you can see the teeth mark having ripped the black polythene waste bags but still they deny they have rats!!
    Good luck with the bait - I think there are new guidelines now for what you can buy to deal with them yourselves - I don't think you can get the granules anymore they have to be satchets or something but not sure on this.

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  11. We found a dead rat on our lawn the other day, plus just a rat tail! I think we must have a very efficient cat living nearby. I have stopped feeding the birds for a bit. Like you, I hope the rats will find somewhere else.

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  12. Pesky rats! I haven't spotted any around here, but I have seen some holes appearing since the field was harvested. I have just checked the wildlife camera, and it is definitely still hedgehogs who are eating the hedgehog food, at the moment! It used to be a real problem when we had the hens.

    Good luck with the workmen, just think how wonderful it will be when they have gone and order is restored, with even more jobs crossed off that 'To Do' list.

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  13. Good to keep busy Sue and very satisfying too. But wisely you took it easy for a couple of days when you realised you were doing too much. Please do keep recharging those batteries.

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  14. You are keeping busy and that is helping you but rest days are so important. You are doing so well Sue. Rats! Oh yuck. I hate them but I do love squirrels. My dad spends his days at war with the squirrels in his garden. I don't understand why he can't just enjoy watching their antics.

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  15. Good luck ridding yourself of the rat population. Horrid beasties. We do have a large metal squirrel-proof feeder that overhands our deck which only allows birds to feed (not that the squirrels haven't tried--hilarious to watch their useless acrobatics). Anything that weighs more than a bird will close off the feed openings. Because of the mechanism, it also means there is very little feed that drops on the ground so no ugly rat critters have been seen so far.

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  16. Toronto is a huge city but we have a lot of green space. I am lucky to live next to a large conservation area with one of the two rivers we have running through to Lake Ontario. Lovely, but it does mean lots of wildlife - including rats! There are bait boxes set out around the building but especially at the back near the wooded area and the dumpsters (which are cleared weekly) but it's always a battle.
    People deal with grief in many ways and I think each person has to go with what works for them. Doing all this physical work is keeping you busy and allowing you time to process what has happened. Come the Winter, when things slow down, you will be ready to sit and think a bit more and hopefully by then the sharpest edge of grief will have been blunted a bit and you will be able to remember all the good times without it hurting too much. I think you have done an amazing job and I suspect Col would be very proud of you and how you have handled everything. Continued good luck.

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  17. You certainly are keeping yourself very busy which is very good for the body and the mind. I envy your energy.

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  18. Won't the rat bait, lost in the compost, contaminate your soil and make it useless for food gardening?

    lizzy

    lizzzz.d@gmail.com

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  19. I cannot abide rats. The stuff we had last time was successful. They were swinging from the trees to get at the bird food.

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  20. I have reduced the bird feeding so there is nothing left by mid day. Our problem is the dumping of Big Mac/KFC meals all along the roadside!! Don't get too busy - remember to leave time to read and be creative as well!

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  21. Rats and mice and wasps are awful here in Oregon. Many people buying items to kill them at hardware store where I work. We have trouble with spiders in our house so I need to spray outside around the house. Glad you were able to sell the poly tunnel quickly. Hugs and blessings!

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