excavating the rose, excavating a bundle, something tried to excavate my house

Dammit! I had my phone/camera in my pocket. I was going to take a ‘before’ picture. Did I? Fuck, no. But here’s the ‘after’ picture. 

Now that I’m finished editing my friend’s book I put my yard work clothes on and went out with pruners and the long handled nippers on Saturday and isolated the rose bush clearing a swath all the way around. When we bought this place, there was a small chinese tallow tree on this corner outside the chain link fence. It also had the mexican wild petunias but the ones with the fatter leaves which I think are a little less invasive than the narrow leafed ones, key words there ‘a little less’. I wanted a spot with a little more sun and since I had three other tallows on the property, I had that one removed. Anyway, one of the things I planted there was one of the heritage roses I had rooted from the one at the city house. I had three. Planted this one here, planted one over in the shop yard which eventually grew into the monster rose bush that I had to cut back to almost nothing to get the trees and Virginia creeper and wild grape out of it. The third one I sent to Ms Moon.

Anyway, I tried to grow various things in that corner bed between the fence and the rose bush, none of which did very well because of the ‘a little less’ invasive mexican petunias (every piece of root left behind grows into another plant, not to mention the explosive seed pods. I finally gave up. The indigofera is against the fence by the gate and holds its own, the white philippine violet which, as it turns out also spreads easily, has colonized that area as has dayflower and all that plus the mexican petunias had taken over so thoroughly you could barely make out the rose bush. My intention was to dig up the rose and move it until I saw the size of the trunk. So yeah, moving it isn’t happening. Now the plan is to beat back everything closer to the fence, leaving enough space that I can get the mower between that stuff and the rose bush. Still have lots more to clear out.

I was hauling the wagon full of stuff headed to the burn pile and I looked down and saw this.

It’s an owl pellet. I thought I had heard an owl while laying in bed a few nights ago with the window open. Here it is teased apart. There’s way more gray fur than I would have thought for a little mouse or vole.

I didn’t find the skull but the bundle wasn’t tight when I found it so maybe it had already fallen out. I might even have stepped on it or the wagon ran over it during one of my previous passages through there. These little skeletal remains will go in a jar and join the other odds and ends on the shelf above my sink.

Sunday dawned colder, overcast, and wet. Not rainy particularly but damp with short bouts of light rain and so no work was done outside or inside for that matter. Daughter Sarah came by for a visit while she was out running errands. 

The other night a noise woke me up and at first I thought it was Cat doing her job! Nope, she was asleep on the bed. It was loud, lasted about 30 seconds and stopped. Then every time I would relax ready to sleep it would start again. I got up four or five times creeping to see if I could find where it was coming from. It was loud, tearing, banging, construction kind of noise. I’ve had critters under the house and in the walls at various times in my life and none of them made noise like that. I finally tracked the noise down to a spot in the kitchen in a corner of the outside wall and it was underneath the floor, like it was tearing apart the sub-floor or the beams. So I stomped on the floor as loud as I could and it stopped long enough for me to get back in bed when it started again. Now I’m getting really pissed off, this is going to keep me awake all night. Fuck. I got out of bed, threw some clothes on, grabbed the nearly 5’ walking stick out of the garage as I went around to the side of the house where the opening to the crawl space was which just happened to be directly across from the corner in the kitchen where the noise was coming from. I got down on my hands and knees and stuck that walking stick under the house as far as I could and started thrashing and banging it around. I guess that put the fear of god into whatever was doing whatever it was doing because that’s been the end of it. So far anyway. I have possums that live under the house, have always since we’ve been here and I’m perfectly happy for them to live there. They are shy creatures that eat garden pests and they don’t carry rabies. I also have armadillos for the past year or two and they generally just dig holes in the yard and flower beds during the night and drive Minnie nuts. And while they can carry leprosy, transmission is rare and usually involves handling them and eating them. Which, yuck!  The only reason I know they are there is I saw two little faces peering out at me one day from the same opening to the crawl space, that and the holes they dig every night. I can’t imagine it was armadillos tearing up the underneath of the house, they’re foragers and don’t have the teeth for that sort of thing. 

Now Monday, also overcast, cold, and lightly rainy. I have no complaints about any of that since it’s exactly what we’ve all been saying we want after the long hot dry summer. Minnie is perfectly content to lay in her little bed under a blanket 

but Cat is annoyed because she wants to go outside, meowing at me constantly to do something. I finally opened the garage and she’s sitting out there staring at the rain.

I suppose I’ll get out my drawing things after breakfast and noodle out some ideas for the next shadow box.