Hello everyone; yes, it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, yet again, here to bring you the latest news from our garden, and, since I have the opportunity, to make fun of the guy I live with, at least a little. You may remember me from such outstandingly memorable posts as “Baby Blue Jays” and “A Near Miss”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. As you can see, I have issues with my ears. I always have had, and when I was a puppy, the guy I live with would constantly say to me “Flaps down”, because my ears were always up. Well, no one is entirely perfect, as we shall see somewhat later.
Let’s talk about the gardening stuff first. There are snowdrops.
Snowdrops. The guy I live with says these might be ‘Theresa Stone’. The guy I live with’s second girl friend, in the third grade, was named Theresa, or Teresa, he forgets, but it wasn’t the same person. The labels aren’t for them. It’s possible they aren’t for anything, now.
And some that have seeded in.
And back to the forms of Crocus korolkowii. This one is called ‘Lemon Tiger’.
Tiger, because it has stripes.
This is ‘Spring Cocktail’. 
‘Black-Eyed Beauty’, again. These flowers weren’t so frozen.
And now, since the weather has been so nice, you can see the raspberry on the buds of Saxifraga × kellereri ‘Johann Kellerer’. Finally, huh. 
Okay, so that’s the gardening. Now on to the good stuff.
You may recall that the guy I live with has been having some trouble with mice. They don’t bother me so much, but he thinks it would be “bad form” if someone were to come over, and mice were walking all over the kitchen. He had shut the door to the crawl space, and thought that had taken care of the problem.
So, last night, he was sitting here at the laptop, reading something, and a mouse walked into the kitchen, from the living room. He got up, I mean, the guy I live with got up, and the mouse ran back into the living room. Then it disappeared under the couch.
The guy I live with got out the flashlight and looked everywhere in the living room that a mouse might be, and there was no mouse.
“The mice must enter some sort of time-space portal under the couch”, he said, but I didn’t think that was really true.
Now, the guy I live with watches both the BBC program “Sherlock”, and the regular TV program “Elementary” (which he claims is not just because it has Lucy Liu in it), and he also has the DVDs of the Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, which both he and my mommy liked a lot, and he also read all the stories when he was 14. (Yes, they had books back then.) He says that practically everyone thinks Sherlock Holmes is cool, like practically everyone thinks dinosaurs are cool.
Well, anyway, later, he went down into the laundry room to shut off the cactus lights, and there was a mouse in the laundry room. It ran into the corner where the paint cans are, by the vacuum cleaner attachments. He moved all that stuff and there was no mouse.
“You know my methods”, I could hear him say to himself, since by now I had lost all interest in this pursuit. “Once you have eliminated the impossible ….” (I think that had something to do with the time-space portal.)
He carried the flashlight downstairs, and this is what he found. Not very focused. Possibly a metaphor. 
“Upon closer inspection, one could discover definite signs of mousal activity”. Indeed. 
“Note, aside from the obvious, the definite signs of the drywall having been chewed.”
He filled the hole with steel wool, and maybe that will be that. Except, of course, to figure out how the mice are getting into the crawl space. He says he’ll leave that for another day. Even after all these many dog-years I can still hear my mommy say to the guy I live with, “Sometimes it’s just exhausting being around you”. That’s what I think, too.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
I think a little duct tape reinforcement on that hole might be prudent.
No doubt. He says he’s going to tack hardware cloth against the drywall. See, that’s why the guy I live with engaged me as the one who posts, so he can talk about himself from a different perspective, and take care of that silly ego. Not the mouseproofing genius he imagines himself to be. Like spring here, today.
I use duct tape for a lot of things. I duct taped an America Plum tree back together when the stupid squirrel jumped on it & snapped it in two — and the tree survived. I duct taped a monarch chrysalis to a branch because the leaf it had attached to died, and the butterfly eclosed in a timely fashion. I duct taped up a mouse hole on our back porch & the mice never came back. Seriously, duct tape.
It was like spring here today, too. I finally got out to pick up the poodle poo, which hasn’t been done in a month because it’s always been my husband’s job & he hasn’t done it since he broke his ankle. It was exhausting. I felt like maybe the dogs I live with morph into elephants when they go out to ‘do their business.’ But while doing this distasteful chore, I encountered a SURPRISE! Surprise lilies poking through the soil. They were a no-show last year, and I thought they were gone for good. That made me sad because they were my mother’s — the only thing she cared enough about to plant & she just loved them. So seeing them made me very happy.
Tomorrow we have TORCON 4 — a 40% possibility of tornadoes. Since we’re nearing the 2nd anniversary (March 2) of the Henryville tornado, the possibility gives me the heebie jeebies. Henryville is only 9 miles north of our house, and they are still rebuilding.
Duct tape. “The handyman’s secret weapon”. It works for conifers wrapped in burlap, when the burlap starts flapping in the wind, though it doesn’t add anything to the décor. The burlap doesn’t do any good for the conifers, as it turns out. Root balls too small for the size of the tree. But anyway, duct tape is a wonderful thing. We have tornadoes here too. Not big ones, but they still happen here. Turns out that Denver has the same average number of them as Portland, OR, but the urban sprawl here is such that tornadoes which would have passed unnoticed by anything but a lonely coyote chasing a tumbleweed are now big news, because the metro area extends forever out onto the plains.
Hi Chess, a few years ago my mum put alfoil in holes in my aunties brickwork to stop mice and I think that worked too. Busy day for my mum yesterday pureeing my vegies for the next month, she hates the job, hours of chopping, pureeing then putting it in containers to freeze, still as she says it’s only once a month. Things are looking good in your garden, I guess the weather is a little warmer. Summer here and at ten in the morning it is still only 12C, if we were at our old place it would be 22C, mummy doesn’t like the cold, 22 is a great temp. There is just no pleasing some people. I can’t imagine, autumn and winter. I like the heat too, but in this new house I am no longer afraid to go out in the rain and get my feet wet, weird, but a good thing I guess. Keep up the cute Chess photos and those snowdrops.
The guy I live with says I’m not going to get any vegetables because, well, because. I don’t like them anyway, not like my buddy Slipper did. It was 15C here today and sunny and about 15 percent humidity. The guy I live with worked in the garden some, and painted a couple of kitchen cabinets. The snowdrops are pretty cool; the guy I live with says he feels very English right now. I don’t get it, really.
I forgot to say you are not alone with the ear issues. Mine do that all the time and mummy always says, earbob Molly you look so funny, and then she flips it back for me. Really I don’t know what the problem is.
It’s probably something like the guy I live with’s shoelaces. They come untied all the time. Except not on all shoes. (He has more than one pair.) Probably heavy earrings, right at the tip, would do the trick, but I wouldn’t want those. (My mommy tried to talk the guy I live with into getting an earring, to look hip or something, not that that would help any. He didn’t get one.) When I was littler, I used to run out to the back fence with my buddy Slipper, to bark at people and dogs walking by, trying to look all fierce and everything, but with my ears flipped up. The guy I live with said it wasn’t a fierce look at all.
There are two possibilities:
– the mice are living inside the couch
-the couch contains a portal to an alternative universe
Both are equally disturbing.
If you were living in the household in Elementary, Chess, you would probably starve since Sherlock’s idea of a fun evening is baking Yorkshire puddings to throw out without eating. I could see him leaving toast for the mice, though. Much of the filming is done around my job in Brooklyn so I play spot the location when I watch the show.
The possibility that the mice were living in the couch was one which he explored last night. It was really gross to think of that, but they aren’t. I’ve never had Yorkshire pudding, but it sounds good. The guy I live with’s sister makes it, with roast beef and horseradish sauce, on holidays, and even though my mommy didn’t like roast beef, she would eat it if the got the end parts. I heard about it afterwards. Now I’m thinking I should be able to try both. I mostly think about food, if you couldn’t tell.
Chess, I think ear back is a great look, but then my Petey sports the same style. Your portrait photo again shows you looking like a puppy – you must be a wonder purebred Border Collie who does not age.
Speaking of fierce, all of the crocus photos show a fierce golden yellow.
Those mice have done a home invasion number on you and the guy you live with. They have become the very definition of “bad form.” Good luck to your guy in his battle. So far the mice seem to be winning, but then he is the big winner with snowdrops, doncha know.
The guy I live with says I am aging, albeit “gracefully, sort of”. The snowdrops are indeed nice, though he says there should be more. “More, more, more.” I think that’s silly.
Funny mice…
Last night, I went to the Cactus Succulent Society meeting where ‘PK’ spoke and showed pictures of Cactus in Europe; along w/ social commentaries. Sweden has done away with its prisons…I went w/ my brother who picked me up! We passed an Oak Tree at York and 17th and he went nuts telling me about it;-)silly plant nerds.
and tomorrow again, Cherokee Ranch: Gardens and Nurseries of Europe the ticket was only $22 bucks; PK again…