On Saturday morning there was just a sprinkling of snow and though it continued to flurry on and off during the day it didn't really begin to settle until nightfall.
By Sunday morning there was a bit more lying - enough for the children opposite to have made a decent snowman. Not much to be done in the garden - I did manage to lift a huge and massively ugly parsnip - half of it made roast parsnip for 4 people - and I went to the allotment to pick some chard.
The decorating was foiled by the presence of a very smelly mouse in the coat cupboard under the stairs. Just sticking your head in made it obvious he was there. We had to spend much of the day emptying and sorting the whole cupboard to find that he was getting in through a gnawed board. We'd boarded the end of the cupboard a few years ago after having a mouse getting in through there. Mr Stinky had chewed right through the boards, cheeky blighter. He now has a live trap set with a bit of ripe cheese awaiting him. It's the local woods for him once we catch him. The alternative it to wall him in which seems cruel. Watch this space for mouse updates!
9 comments:
Oh dear - I hope that you don't have Mrs Stinky and all the little stinkys in there too!
Chocolate works well in mouse traps - and it makes a fine excuse to buy a bar for the sake of the tiny shaving that you need to bait the trap!
I've heard about chocolate Hazel. I try not to have any in or I wouldn't be the shape I am now - not that it's all that brilliant! I also thought about raisins. EVERYTHING likes raisins - except my son in law!
Snow seems to be the theme of all the northern hemisphere gardening blogs I've been visiting today. I guess it really is that time of year.
So is the other half of the parsnips waiting for next dinner?
Try peanut butter - the little b*ggers cannot resist it. Then release more than half a mile from home, apparently that's the minimum distance or else they will just toddle back to Flummery Towers (who measures the damn things anyway?).
Yes Ottawa Gardener. As there are usually only two of us for dinner it will makes two more meals!
I haven't got any peanut butter in Bilbo - can't stand the stuff. He's still at large as we speak though. He's been in the trap, nibbled the cheese then managed to get out befroe it shut so he must have tripped it on the way out, not the way in. As a house mouse he is very small, light and nippy. I'm sure we'll get him in the end.
Ah yes, I remember that smell of mice, it's unmistakable! We had the same problem in the cupboard under the stairs. We discovered it months later when we found piles of neatly chewed and shredded paper and cardboard!
The mess one mouse can make needs to be seen to be believed! we had one in our caravan one year - it shredded a draw full of tea towels, a whole packet of paper napkins the cushions of two garden loungers,(foam lumps everywhere!) and the awning had some interesting lace features! oh! and the paperback left in there by mistake was unreadable! and as you say the 'smell!' We let the cats loose in there and mouse soon found it was safer outside and disappeared from the van.
I love your description of a huge and massively ugly parsnip ... probably better not to have a photo as it leaves my imagination free to visualise what it must look like ...
I sympathise about the mouse invasion. It is amazing that such a small and cute-faced creature can stink so much. I once lived in a grotty old farm cottage where they used to climb up on the bed at night and chew holes in the duvet cover. Ack.
Mr Stinky now caught - see next post!
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