There’s definitely something strange about our garage. It’s a dark place at the best of times, but on a stormy night the doors rattle and the wind whistles.
The grandchildren, normally full of noise and action, grow silent when they go in there. Although nice and tidy when I leave, on returning everything is in a mess. My wife Linda hasn’t been there for years, and everything that needs to go in gets left around the front door for me to either move into the garage or keep tripping over.
I’m beginning to realise that keeping my tools in the garage explains a lot of the difficulties I have with DIY. Whenever I try to put a screw in the wall of our house nothing seems to work… wrong screw, wrong screwdriver, wrong raw plug, even wrong wall sometimes. There must be a curse on my toolbox.
I reckon it’s the ghost of rodents past. A few years ago we bunny sat daughter Becky’s pet rabbit while she was on holiday. Brought a bale of hay back from her cottage in the countryside for bedding and stored it in the garage.
Shortly after I started seeing out of the corner of my eye lightening quick movements up the garage wall... so quick I could never fix on what it was. Then noticed some of the rubbish bags were being nibbled at, We’d got a pest! After trying several solutions I put rat poison down on a ledge running around the top of the garage wall. No more problems. Some while later during the annual tidying up of the garage I found the desiccated remains of a rat. Yuk!
That wasn’t the end of the story. We had our soffits replaced some years later, and while replacing the bits in the porch another dried out rat was discovered. Not only that, but there was evidence of gnawing away of wooden supports… not enough to compromise safety, but if the rats had been around longer goodness knows what damage they’d have caused!
Whatever the spook is, better not mess with my homebrew apple wine or there’ll be real trouble!
The Fiat Panda is going well…. almost hit 500 miles on the clock in six weeks. Wow… some mileage! I’ve noticed a strange tendency for other car users waiting at junctions to throw themselves out in front of me. Think they must take one look and assume it’s an old age pensioner driving, and not the youthful and thrusting racing driver gripping the steering wheel. Having mistakenly decided it’s going to be ages before I reach them they launch themselves with gay abandon even if only I’m yards away.
Still decorating the living room. Madly wallpapering for the last week and determined to finish today. Looks really nice, but I’ve spent so much time in there I now get a nervous twitch in my left eye whenever I go in the room.
Had the first committee meeting of the Hill Rise Allotment Association last week, very productive. You can see the minutes by clicking here to access the HRAA web site, then go to the Forum page (to be renamed Committee page soon) to see all committee business and documents.
Only fleeting visits to the allotment since the main focus has been decorating. Really pleased to see the Japanese onion seeds sprouting, see photo below.
 | Here are the baby Japanese onion seeds sprouting after about ten days |
 | Lettuce seedlings |
 | Fig tree cutting |
 | Vine cuttings and hop plant |
 | Mushrooms growing all over the allotment from wood chips laid earlier in the year… to read that story click here |
 | Strange headgear on a duck at The Waits, St Ives |
I've seen that duck .... do you think it's an overgrowth of feathers or a tumour? Either way it seems pretty contented.
ReplyDelete