poplar road

Last Sunday afternoon I went for a walk in the fields south of here just before dusk. I love the silhouettes of the hawthorn thickets, it reminds me of a German painter called Friedrich whom I love, and playing with the photos this week I thought of Mondrian as well.

I meant to post these that night, but when I got home the whole street was in darkness. A semi-trailer somehow managed to knock out our power, and it didn't come on again until 1am. So, better late than never I suppose. I'm rushing to get into town this morning and drop off a resume so the photos will have to speak for themselves this time. Enjoy!

We woke to another eight inches or so of snow on Friday morning. With what was left from Monday it's over a foot deep in places. I had to postpone my naturopathy appointment because it was snowing like crazy and Richard barely made it out of the driveway. Poplar Road didn't get ploughed until mid-afternoon, when our neighbour Jeff had already used his backhoe to clear the road and everybody's driveways. I went for a walk before breakfast, determined to find Cama Llama and get the pictures of her that friends have been requesting. When I went round the side of the house to the gate, I saw what the snow had done to my lilac. Gorgeous. Now it's Sunday morning, and we've had another inch of fine powder to top it off. I might wander over to the fields south of here with the camera. Never made it over there last year.

The view from the new French doors in our master bedroom is gorgeous. There are icicles up to 18" long hanging from the eaves all around the house. I took pictures yesterday but haven't downloaded them yet. Our blue spruce tree looks the best of all the trees in the yard, but somehow I've yet to take a photo of it that looks as good as the real thing. Whereas the shot of the fir in the back, taken Friday morning while the snow was still falling, looks amazing with the snowflakes in the foreground. Because most of the image is white, I was able to reduce the file size a lot and still post a larger format picture. I would have liked to display the first image of the lilac boughs the full width of the screen, but all the detail would be lost.

More than that, though, I would love to take my niece, Lael, under that snowy arch in person on just such a day, make a snow fort, and trudge out the back gate to the woods to see Cam. I'm really looking forward to that.

The next photos I take of Cama Llama will likely be with her new baby. I hope I'm there to see it this time, but I'll be heading down to Vancouver at the end of the week for the Bellydance Superstars show. I'm glad we got our snow this weekend and not when I'm about to drive the Coq. IF Richard even lets me, as he's not thrilled about the idea. I have no snow-driving experience other than once in December. But the forecast is for plus seven degrees again by Tuesday so we'll see. I'm enjoying this snowfall as long as it lasts!

Yesterday, after almost six weeks of unusually warm weather, we finally got the snowfall we were hoping for. (Well, we wish there was more, and that it hadn't started warming up again right away, but some is better than none.) I was thrilled to find it's the sticky, perfect-for-snowmen kind of snow, which is more rare up here. We had three feet of snow in our yard by last February, and not an inch of it would stick together enough for even a snowball. So before dinner last night I bundled up and made this cheerful fellow.

As my optimistic younger sister in North Van reminded me, there's a good chance of a great snowfall in February, so I'm not giving up on having a good foot or two of snow in my yard still this winter. What I'd like to know is, does anyone plan to come up and enjoy winter with us? I'm just guessing, because the weather so far has been even more unpredictable than normal, but I'd say we've got about 6 weeks of winter left, at least as far as enjoying cross-country skiing, tobogganing or horse-drawn sleigh rides goes. Watch the forecast and let us know if you'd like to come up – we're taking reservations for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th weeks of February. Following are some more photos for inspiration!

Above we have our driveway, which the goat&llama man has since plowed using his quad, and two shots of the barn which looks so great in the snow. To the left of the barn, backing onto the forest behind us, is a wide, potentially flat area that could be used to make a mini hockey rink, weather permitting. That's something we might consider for our New Years 2006 party if enough people are into it. (Let's hope the weather is colder!)

The barn, remember, is going to be Richard's shop. Getting the interior cleared out and re-organized to allow the 4x4 to fit through is the next demolition project, starting this spring. Richard's mom has dibs on the gorgeous barn door (below) for a table, although we're tempted to keep it ourselves. We could make a table big enough to seat 20 people out of all the wood we'll salvage. (We'll be putting siding up over the existing exterior as part of insulating the whole thing.) I'm not sure if Richard will tear down the last chicken run, which is covered in beautiful Virginia Creeper vines, or use it as storage for all those ugly truck parts etc – which would keep them out of my sight!

Playing in the snow aside, I am still searching for a job and doing small reno tasks like finishing the white trim and doors in our master bedroom. Richard finally got a replacement demonstration Unimog last week, a white one this time, and he and his cousin Greg worked on both their Mogs last weekend. In a few weeks, Richard heads to Alaska for a week to deliver his old orange one to a client there (his first sale back in October), and I'm heading down for a quick weekend in Vancouver to see an international belly dance troupe perform in Richmond with some of my classmates. Aside from Greg's visit last week it's been very quiet around here, but we look forward to visitors soon. In addition to the snow factor, for those animal-lovers out there, the goats just had a bunch of kids over Christmas, and Cama, Jonathan's last remaining llama, is due in February. (Best wishes, by the way, to the Adies and Schmolls who are expecting babies in the next few weeks.)

Snow is the most exciting thing happening right now, but I'm close to finishing the master bedroom paint job and will post a couple of "final" pictures soon. The ensuite bathroom reno is unfortunately still a long way away – Richard much prefers tinkering on our new car (a 1987 Toyota Cressida which we bought on our way home after Christmas), and his new Unimog (which of course justified new tools). If I knew how to do electrical, plumbing, and framing, I'd be drywalling in there by now, but I know once we get started it's only one week's work to do such a small room. Eventually we can rest with a trip to the spa – in our own home. In the meantime, it's white white white inside and out as I crack open the can of trim paint and look out my bedroom French doors at the snow.

Warning: the following story is not suitable for young readers or anyone with a sentimental attachment to rodents (or chocolates, for that matter).

After Allyson sent me a link to blogger Lindsey Mitchell's rodent rant this morning, I felt inspired to relate the latest in our little Nutcracker battle, which began, appropriately, just after Christmas. The onset of the warm weather must have encouraged a new mouse dynasty to move into the neighbourhood, because we hadn't been plagued with them for quite a while and thinking them vanquished, I'd forgotten to be vigilant. The first sign that while we were away for Christmas, creatures were, in fact, stirring quite boldly, came when we arrived home on the 27th.

Relaxing on the couch and enjoying our Christmas tree that evening, my eye naturally strayed to the wrapped boxes of Purdy's truffles which were all that we had bought each other for Christmas (aside from our "new" 1987 Toyota Cressida, but more on that later). In the midst of suggesting we open our gifts, I noticed tiny shards of paper on the floor next to my box. Having to wait until after Christmas to open my gift was bad enough. The thought that a mouse might have eaten a single one of my hedgehogs, each as big as it was, had me fuming. We ran to the tree, grabbed our gifts and inspected the damage. Hurrah for Purdy's, their heavy gold gift wrap and thick boxes had foiled even this mighty mouse. The only damage was three spots of chewed wrapping on mine, and no attempts at all on Richard's box. Relieved, we quit grumbling and returned to the couch to watch a movie and indulge. After the movie, I very carefully put the lid on my box and placed it on the highest shelf of our metal shelving unit housing the TV. I didn't notice where Richard left his smaller, plastic-lidded box. We retired for the night, first Richard, then myself quite late, and having been away for several days, fell asleep quite soundly in our own bed at last.

But a good night's sleep was not to be. I awoke just before 6am to the awareness of empty air where Richard had been, and a noise in the kitchen. I ran down the hall as my eyes adjusted to the sight of a large naked man chasing a tiny mouse across the great room floor. He thought the mouse (which runs like a racehorse on those tiny legs, how is that possible?) had run past me to the stairwell and down to the basement, so he ran down there barefoot (no mean feat with our unfinished steps and cluttered concrete floors). While he was looking for it in the rafters below the fireplace, I stood still and listened. Sure enough, the sound of something rolling came from the door to my office. Rolling is the key – we sometimes leave wolferin, a dessicating blood thinner poison – in chunks in mouse-ridden spots, where the little bugger chews the edges round, and rolls it to its cache location of choice (ie a plant pot, a box of electrical equipment, Richard's old shoes). So I wasn't surprised it was rolling something. But when I surprised it and it fled through the crack between the drywall and the brick fireplace, the ball of poison it left on my office step turned out not to be poison at all. "Richard!" I called.

He came running up the stairs, having given up trying to locate the mouse's route upward. I presented him with the mouse's booty. The hoarse inward gasp and look of horror on Richard's face is hard to describe. He dashed to the tall end table behind the couch, on which I had an arrangement of greenery, golden pear ornaments and fresh pomegranates, on top of which he'd left his box of Purdy's. The mouse hadn't touched the pomegranates while we were away, and as far as we knew had not ventured at all up the side of the couch to the tabletop before this. But the little bugger must have a fine-tuned chocolate-loving nose, because it had only taken it four hours, from my 2 am bedtime until Richard woke to its noises just before 6:00, for it to map the potentially uncharted wilds of the top of the couch (prior residents knew the interior of the couch well, sad to say), find its way to the box of Purdy's, pry up the fitted plastic lid, and steal the pecan-topped truffle (Richard's favourite), rolling it back down the couch, onto the floor (probably the noise which woke Richard), and under the other couch. Which is where it must have been hiding until I stood still long enough. We wouldn't even have known, if the chocolate wasn't a bit too big for the mouse to squeeze along after itself through the gap in the wall. Had I gone to bed when Richard did at 10, who knows how many the thief might have stolen. Richard inspected the remains of his Christmas present, found only the one missing, and put the rest up on the shelf with mine. He was already padding back down the hall to bed when I heard the mouse again, in the kitchen this time. I spooked it and it ran, first to the hallway, where Richard shouted and blocked its path to the stairwell. It swerved and ran towards the hall closet. I grabbed a pair of boots out of the way and opened the front door, shrieking. It ran out at lightning speed, its little heart probably beating half out of its chest. I slammed the door. "It's out," I said, and collapsed in massive giggles. Naked man and giggly girl went back to bed.

You could say we won that battle, having deprived the thief of its sugar fix. And being cautious, I kept the kitchen spotless – with extra Windex – for the remainder of the week, also replacing the stashes of mouse poison we'd so foolishly stopped using after a mouse-free summer. All seemed quiet. No telltale rolling noises, no poop in the sink (the poison makes the mouse thirsty). Until New Year's Eve, when Richard cooked the turkey we hadn't had for Christmas. A big meal with all the trimmings meant counters full of dishes, gravy and cheese sauce splashes, bits of cranberry-pecan stuffing (it must have been the pecans), and the pervasive scent of turkey. Too much cleanup for me on a New Year's Eve. Too much food for a wise mouse to resist. On New Year's day, surveying the massive cleanup job ahead of me, I found a chunk of poison moved from its spot on the counter to the stovetop next to the front right element. Ugh. I also found poop – black, not green, which meant the bugger hadn't eaten enough poison to kill it – in the sink beneath the dishes. "Bleach", Richard said. This was war.

I just wanted to know how the mouse was getting onto the counter top. I bleached the face of the cabinets, especially the drawers, thinking this mighty mouse might be climbing straight up like the grandfather clock in Hickory Dickory Dock (which I had always thought was impossible, but I was starting to change my mind). I pulled the hand towels from the drawer handles at the thought that mice might be using them to reach my counters. I made sure there were no other easy paths upward from the kitchen floor. A few days into the New Year, I solved the mystery. That morning, the poison wasn't just next to the element on the stove, it was jammed part way underneath it. I stared. The metal trays beneath our elements are tin-foil free: Richard feels that lining the trays changes heat distribution. So looking beneath the element, you see a metal tray with a large hole in the centre. This leads, Richard explained, to a cavity between the oven and the range for insulation, going around the back and underneath. I suddenly remembered the oven drawer, which had been empty since I discovered that mice had chewed up my oven mitts and made a disgusting mess on top of the roasting pans. I opened it to find a mouse dropping dungheap. There it was, the perfect countertop access: the new hole in the floor behind the oven for the gas line Chris added last summer, an undisturbed drawer, and a pathway complete with mouse-sized entrance to our stovetop. The only solution for now is more poison, and more bleach.

The battle continues, the chunk of poison always near the front element, and poop regularly in my sink, which was particularly awful when I'd left the clean dishes to drain and the poop appeared underneath AFTER I'd put all the dishes away. I dry them off and put them away before bed every night now. A good day is when the poison appears chewed and the droppings are green. I usually get a morning off if I bleached throroughly the night before. But each time the green and the quiet convince me I've gotten rid of the menace, the next day there's new evidence. Reading Lindsey Mitchell's blog, I am suddenly feeling a) guilty for using poison instead of humane traps and b) certain that my mice are close relatives of hers because they are also displaying NIMH-like tendencies, always moving and storing the damn poison but never eating enough of it, thus escaping certain extermination. (Except for the one that made a nest in our Christmas decorations box using the Santa hat and the basket of thread-wrapped ball ornaments, in which it died and turned into a perfect skeleton with a grey fur boa.) That said, I may have solved the not-eating-enough problem; instead of a chunk which can be rounded and rolled, I left a mound of loose shards in the oven drawer hangout. I sat reading on Friday morning, trying at first to tune out a bizarre noise which I finally realized was the echoing-on-metal sound of it chewing like mad in the oven drawer. Then it had the gall (at 8:30 in the morning!) to run across my kitchen floor, under the main couch I was seated on, pause there while listening to me pull my feet onto the couch in instinctive fright, and then scurry in a smoky grey blur (how do the bloody little things move so fast!?) to the smaller couch and down into my office where it again squeezed through one of the gaps between the drywall and the brick fireplace. I have restocked the drawer in the hopes of imminent mummification, but when cousin Greg and Richard have finished their work on their Mogs for the weekend, I'm going to get Richard to go crazy with his bottle of expanding foam in every last nook and cranny, even the ones that appear too small for a 2 inch long critter to fit through. Because this has got to end soon or my nightmares are going to feature me in a nightgown and Richard in a brass-buttoned tin soldier jacket, doing battle with 6 foot tall sword-bearing rodents. I'm glad I didn't watch the Nutcracker Ballet this Christmas. All this angst over just one mouse. At least I'm not alone.