Thump! Supper's ready!

Summer is here and our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share has arrived. We also opted to put in a relatively small garden this year, so depending on how much we end up feeding the bunnies, we may have an overabundance of a few things when combined with the CSA produce. We very much enjoy our CSA and I encourage you to look into it if you aren't already a member of a CSA.

On the rodent front, we've seen no mice in weeks, but the rabbits are eating our garden and a few of our hostas. This weekend we may try the old box, stick and string trick to see if we can catch one and relocate it elsewhere. If it works, the kids will talk about it for months. If it doesn't, they'll talk about it for days or weeks. Either way, I think it's worth trying.

A little known fact (to me) about bricks with recessed mortar is that they are laughably easy for squirrels to climb. Tuesday after work I found two squirrels busily chasing each other around the outside of my house. It appears love is in the air.

My wife succeeded in scaring one by opening a second story window, leaning out and yelling at it. [MHH says - Actually, it was the bathroom window that opens onto the second floor balcony. So I climbed out and yelled at him!] It took a 12 foot jump to the ground and ran off. The other one had the temerity to hang from the corner of my house and scold me for evidently getting too close to his home. I asked him for rent, but he just twitched his tail at me. Cheeky.

Wednesday morning, as I was brushing my teeth and looking out the bathroom window, who should look around the corner and peek at me through the window? You guessed it, my freeloading renter. I didn't have time to deal with him, so I let him have free rein for the day. That night though, I chased him off again, and there was another fabulous twelve foot free fall. There's something very satisfying about hearing the thump of a squirrel on the ground. Maybe it's an ancestral memory of the days when we were hunter gatherers and that thump meant supper had fallen from the tree. In any case, I haven't seen him since then.

I am of course concerned about the squirrels and the numerous holes in my soffit. I've seen no evidence that they are nesting in my soffit, but seeing them makes the soffit repair a bit more urgent. I'll have to get something over those holes this weekend, beadboard or no.