Natural Remedies for Natural Problems

Nature is many things, but most people would not say that Nature is "predictable".  Nature is usually viewed as being wildly variable while operating within the loose confines of a schedule.  What I mean is we all know Spring follows Winter, but nobody knows when it will arrive. Case in point, last week it snowed.  This time last year, we had had a week with temperatures hovering around 25C.  Twelve years ago when my son was born, it was 30C.

But some things, like bird migrations, you can almost set your watch by.  Last year, on April 23, I wrote about dealing with a Northern Flicker hell-bent on living in my dining room walls.  We used a pellet gun to persuade her over a couple days that she really wanted to live somewhere else.  After the (considerable) damage, we filled the holes with spray foam but discovered that spray foam doesn't do much to stop rain.  We now have leaks around the frames of three windows.  The repair  will actually be quite a big job and is on a list of things to do.

Anyway.  It's April 25 and guess what.  The bird is back - probably the same one too.  I have three new holes in the back of my house.  We still have a pellet gun but I might have stumbled onto a much better deterrent   I have a cat; not a particularly good mouser and I've never seen her catch a bird, but a cat nonetheless.  She is sitting right at the edge of the window above where the bird is banging on the wall.  They can actually see each other.

You know what else I learned about nature?  Birds won't build a nest right under a predator's perch.  Kitty just earned room and board for another year.

Ladybirds and Hornets and Flies! Oh My!

One of the things about an old stone house is that even though it looks like a big pile of stone which has been arranged in a fashion pleasing to the builder, it is very much a living and breathing thing.  No, the stone doesn't 'breathe' the way you and I do, but the house as a whole is certainly not an airtight structure.  I have drafts all over the place;  some where you expect them like windows and doors, and some in unlikely places like the middle of a wall.

And it is very much alive.  It is crawling with life.  And herein lies my problem.

I was sitting up in bed the other night reading and got smacked in the middle of my forehead by a ladybird flitting around the room.  Most of my windows have at least one housefly in them trying to get out and we have hornets in the living room.  Ladybirds and houseflies I can deal with.  Hornets are another matter altogether.

Last fall, quite late in the season, Chuck went around the outside of the house with a mortar compound and filled in lots of the little cracks.  While he was doing this he found a large gap under a windowsill so he filled that in as well.  Curiously, that same window is where the hornets are all appearing in the house so we think he might have sealed in a hornets nest.  We've killed four or five a day for the past week.  Now the question is how to get rid of them.  I'm inclined to go out and chip open a hole under the sill - both to let the cold air in to encourage a longer hibernation (we still have a foot of snow on the ground.  I'm not prepared to deal with hornets yet!), and to provide another - hopefully more attractive - exit for them when it warms up.  I'm also trying to find out where exactly they are entering the house to seal that off.

In the meantime I keep reminding myself that it could always be worse.  It isn't snakes in my bathtub.

End of the Drought?

It's Saturday again and the most exciting thing is that it has rained.  I don't mean just a little tease of a sprinkle, I mean measurable rainfall.  In some ways it's very good - a huge relief that might be in time for some crops.  But truthfully, there has been rain for the past week and my yard  is now a different colour - it's green again.  We need to cut the grass and I think all the little slips of trees that I planted in the spring might even survive.

There has been some knitting happening too.  I've finished a sock and most of a mitten.  Before anybody asks, no - there's no second-sock syndrome or second-mitten syndrome happening.  I simply don't know how I want to finish the mitten so there it sits on the needles waiting for me to make a decision.  I'm leaning towards a very simple cuff - but part of me wants to make something big and extravagant.

As for the sock, I finished it and grafted the toe late last night while watching TV.  I even started casting on for the second sock but when I couldn't correctly count to 64 (to make sure I had the right number of stitches) I gave up and went to bed.

Which is when I decided that maybe this much rain isn't a good thing.

There is about 2 cups of water in the bowl.