May Long Weekend

For the first time since we've had the cottage (4 years) we arrived to find a mouse in the house.
Well at least it was dead.... drowned in anti-freeze in the toilet! Okay kinda gross but an easy situation to remedy. And it seemed the only place the mouse had left a mess was in our cutlery drawer... Anyone want to drop by for dinner?  Once again simple enough to clean up. But of course the story continues... last night we saw another very healthy mouse make it's way into the stove. Not so good as I have had to replace a stove in one of our Hamilton tenants' flats due to mice nesting in it. So we moved the stove around and the mouse ran out... great, well now where's the mouse? So today we will have to make a trip to town and get mouse poison and traps and hopefully we will find this one waiting for us next time we come to the cottage in a few weeks! I guess those anti-mouse high pitch audio devices I have been using here and swearing by don't really work and we have just had good luck up to now.

Fantastic hot long weekend weather approaching 30! I almost went in for a swim, but Debs fear of my having a heart attack was all the incentive I needed to enjoy the still very chilly water from the dock. Maybe today as it will be an even hotter day and I need some bragging rights.

The garden is almost ready for planting, we added new soil and manure and has now been tilled! Our garlic planted last fall looks like it is doing well. Deb wants to plant a few things this weekend... may be a few weeks early, but hopefully no more frost will appear.

I can't say enough about Briggs and Stratton engines. By coincidence both our old beat up lawn mower
left here by my friend George when he and his family were here for a weekend and our garden tiller bought at a garage sale nearby have identical engines. They are both at least 20 years old if not likely older. I take no special care of these except to add gas, but every year the tiller cranks up and runs perfectly for the one hour a year it is needed - what a find that was for $25, it is way more solid that what you'd get today for $1000. And pretty much the same with the lawn mower - one or two pulls and off it goes cutting through all the rough which comprised our "lawn".

Deb got a great used bike from a neighbour down the road... perfect condition for $30, well we actually negotiated to $25 but didn't have change. A deal for that price!

Next we need to start hauling the logs we cut last summer out of the woods where they have been aging over the winter... Matt and I will have fun splitting them over the summer.

So summer is on!!