Life in Orillia: Gardening, Lifestyle, Leisure

Winter's Little Annoyances

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 12:20:34 GMT

Here's another little winter annoyance - partly due to the snow, and partly the cold:

Little Bigfoot - found this little guy in the kitchen one day, climbing up my exercise mat which happened to be hanging over the top bar of another piece of exercise equipment. I can tell you that it freaked me out a little - a mouse isn't something I normally want to see. It took me a few minutes to recover and run for my camera, though I expected he'd scurry away as soon as he saw me moving. He (she?) didn't, he just continued climbing up that strap (which is only 3/4" in width). To give you an idea of his size, that black clip is only 1.5" from it's very tip to it's very bottom.

After a few minutes I realized he wasn't going anywhere and fired off a couple of snapshots - I figured nobody would believe that it was such a bold little critter.

Now, I've seen mice before - white mice, pet mice, even dead mice in the ceilings when we remodelled, but this is probably the first one I've seen with such big feet in relation to it's tiny body. "My, my, Mr. Mouse...what big feet you have!"

All in all, it must have sat on top of that exercise mat for well over an hour; I spent almost that long on my treadmill a few feet away, and it sat there the whole time. When my daughter came in it freaked her out a little, and a few minutes later my son-in-law came. Minutes after that the mouse finally figured out how to get down and landed on the floor...wandered around a bit and was trying to get into a plastic bag full of newspapers. By this time I was feeling a little sorry for it...it moved slow, seemed confused and frightened - it probably was sick (maybe even dying). We stuck a paperbag on the floor and when it was halfway in my son-in-law picked up the bag (of course Little Bigfoot fell into the rest of the way into the bag) and wanted to know what I wanted done with it.

By that time I didn't have the heart to kill it...we released him outdoors.

I'm pretty sure the reason he was indoors was because there was so much snow outdoors that finding food was probably difficult...finding warmth too. Our house is over 100 years old, and although the foundation and sill above it are in good shape, the front half of the basement is nothing more than dirt crawlspace. More than likely it would be very easy to access that area from the outside - the old furnace is in there too, so it's warm and comfy.

If there hadn't been all that snow, we wouldn't have had the mouse in the kitchen. In some ways, I'm not sure if that's bad - in the end I thought he was a cute little guy, and I didn't mind the visit, but I sure didn't want him living here.

Oh yeah, we do have a cat, but she slept through the whole episode.

The Snow Woes

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 09:57:25 GMT

Given the fact that we have been getting snow since last Friday (January 18th) I am beginning to feel a bit overwhelmed by it. Firstly, I hate snow...absolutely hate it. Although it can be beautiful when it's still pristine and clean, it certainly has it's faults - one is that it's cold and I don't like the cold either; the other is that you have to shovel it.

For the most part I find shovelling snow to be good exercise (builds muscles in your back, legs, arms) and it gets me out of the house in winter (when normally I'd be hibernating indoors) it's gotten to the point where there's nowhere to put what you shovel. It's also getting sort of depressing to see so much of it, and apparently we will be getting more...right up until the end of the week.

The paper reports that as long as the snow continues falling at the rate they expect it to, we'll have received another metre of snow (that's just for this week folks) - a metre! Know how much that is? It's 39.something inches!!! The other day while I was out shovelling I ran in and grabbed my camera just to snap a few shots of the snow in the drive before I shovelled it all out. Yes, there is a car back there.

This one is a corner of our covered porch - a little tough to see at this smaller size, but it's still snowing onto the porch - that white thing? It's a wicker bird cage...or it was, anyways.

The fact that it's been snowing daily has put our moving plans into "holding" mode - it's a good thing we have that luxury right now, or our new house would be full of snowy boxes....melting all over the place.

In a Town Garden

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:39:09 GMT

We live in town, right on the main street as a matter of fact. About a 5 minute walk from the main downtown shopping area, and directly across from the hospital. The street is busy, and dusty and you see all manner of things living here. Sitting on our front porch watching the world go by is an interesting pastime for us.

At various times through the year, the parades hosted on the main street go by our house; the Scottish Festival, the Santa Claus Parade, a few others I don't pay as much attention to. We have ringside seats.

During the spring to autumn months, vintage cars of all descriptions, as well as motorcycles, parade past our front door in a fairly regular stream. So do people on foot; the elderly, the young, the not so young, people with dogs on leashes, people with babies in strollers, even a lady with a dog in a stroller; people on crutches, people with odd clothing and incredible hairstyles, teenagers on skateboard, kids on bikes, people inebriated by their choice of alcohol and drug. Some of it's pleaseant, some of it's not, but most of it is interesting to watch on warm summer evening.

On a daily basis we pray as fire engines, ambulances and police cars scream by our house, sometimes stopping within site of our front door - sometimes we see fender benders, sometimes family spats, sometimes a 'raid', once, a 'standoff' a couple of doors up the street where a man had barricaded himself and his family in an apartment in a duplex.

Not long after we moved here we had people just walk into our home off the street - once a mistake, the man thought he had the artists studio next door to us, and another time a woman who had too much to drink walked in and ordered us to phone her a taxi. My husband showed her out the front door. From then on, we kept a latch on the screen door.

In the years we've lived here we've had a number of things stolen from the front (can't really call it a yard since it's a couple of steps from the sidewalk) - planters with plants in them, plants taken out of the planters, plants that have been dug out with a shovel from the garden, stepping stones, garden signs, a snow shovel, a hose, even rocks. Just ordinary rocks, not the kind you pay for, but the big ones you pick up anywhere in the countryside out of a ditch. Who would bother to dig up and steal a rock? Someone also took a liking to the city's "No Parking" sign on the boulevard out front - one morning we found it mysteriously missing.

I made my own garden signs and stepping stones from concrete and stained glass, the signs of hand painted wood, so I just kept replacing them for the first few years. After a while though, you get a little tired of it. Finally, the last garden stone I made had a large ring of iron embedded in it before the concrete dried and my husband chained it to one of the yew trees out front. I buried the chain in the garden so it looked fine. Two or three nights after I put it in the garden, someone tried to make off with it. I'm sure whoever it was ended up with a sore shoulder the next day. We found it in the middle of the sidewalk with one corner broken off, but still attached to it's chain. From the look of it, someone had grabbed and tried to run with it - when it came to the end of it's chain, it likely gave the runner a pretty good jerk. It's still in the front garden.

Besides having things taken, we've had things left - an unending stream of garbage and cigarette butts: candy wrappers, rubber gloves, kleenex, baindaids, paper bags, plastic bags, coffee cups, pop tins, gum, grocery receipts, cardboard from toys and games, socks and gloves, beer bottles and many other things. Some of it tossed from passing cars, some of from the walkers, some of it from the O'brien Street Medical Centre next door to us. Lots of garbage has the medlab labels on it, and I'm sure that's where the rubber gloves come from - that or the hospital since they are those white things medical personnel wear. Sometimes we have broken glass too. The worst is the doggy doo... All of this ends up in my front garden, including the dog deposits. My morning ritual consists of going outside with a plastic grocery bag (which they are trying to ban) and picking up the rubbish. In a month, the amount of rubbish I have to clean up fills one large green garbage bag, which I then have to pay to have picked up. Thanks to all of you. How about keeping your rubbish to yourselves?

Some might think that a location like is wouldn't lend itself to gardening, but our backyard is like an oasis. The lot is only 45' wide, but it runs to 172' deep; since the house sits at the front of the yard, the majority of the lot is behind us. The neighbours on one side have kids - but they are quiet and pretty well behaved and certainly have never been a bother. The opposite side is the med centre staff parking lot. It's a little busy in the early morning, and again around 5-6 in the evening, but it's fairly quiet most of the time. The lots on the street behind run off corner to ours, there are two that back onto ours, almost as long as ours. The one house has been empty for a few weeks due to a fire, but it hasn't been a noisy neighbour either - the next house has neighbours we've met from time to time over the back fence, but they are quiet too. We don't have to contend with rowdy parties and noisy radios, and on weekends, it's quiet on all sides of us.

There is over 100' of garden space on one side of the backyard alone, plus a large area (12 X10) behind the garage, and then another 50' or so on the opposite side. The front yard grass I dug up a few years ago and turned it into garden space as well. Along the easterly side of the house where sun shines from early morning til early afternoon is a border garden that runs front to back of the house (about 40'), and on the boulevard in front of the (owned by the city) house another small garden around the No Parking sign.

There's more than enough to keep the most avid gardener busy here - I spend most of my time out there, enjoying the relative quiet; sometimes, even falling asleep on the shaded swing. If you happen to be in the neighbourhood, stop in and say hello, or ask for pieces of a plant you like. I am willing to share just about anything from the garden.