home produce – Just Life

Hi All

I have been reluctant to report on how well Chea, the ‘nest raiding’ puss, is behaving these days because I firmly believe that once I shout it out to the world she will instantly prove me wrong . So, I’m going to whisper this …she hasn’t, to my knowledge, raided a robin’s nest this year and returned home with her cache of fledglings. However…

This week she has changed her prey of preference – or is it just availability? – to the humble field mouse.

I ventured to look up from the laptop on Monday morning and there, before my eyes was Chea, on the other side of the patio doors, scuttling round the shoe rack and Richard’s Crocs that he had left on the floor. I know her movements and actions now. Scuttling doesn’t mean a bird. Scuttling means a rodent of some description.

Now, call me pathetic but I have a real ‘hang-up’ about approaching mice and all members of that genus. I think it’s some weird ingrained thing. I think it has something to do with the fact that I could make matters worse. If I approach, and the mouse makes a break for it, and Chea takes advantage of that and catches it and kills it, then the poor creature’s demise is down to me. Also, it might run across my toes!

Like the worst person on the planet I watched from the safety of the kitchen and saw the mouse break cover. Chea pounced – and the mouse ran into one of Richard’s Crocs. Chea ran ten circles around the shoe before coming to a halt at the toe. I could see the mouse’s little nose pushing forward through one of the Crocs holes at the front as it tried to squeeze its body through it. Chea sat waiting licking her lips and flexing her claws. This obviously wasn’t the most intelligent mouse. Forward, through the toe of the shoe into Chea’s waiting clutches was not the way to go.

Like old Butch Cassidy and Sundance, racing out only to be gunned down, I left the security of the kitchen and blundered out on tiptoe and grabbed Chea. She was most unimpressed and continued to strut back and forth, back and forth, across the patio doors for a good ten minutes.

After an hour the mouse was still pressed into the Croc, its little nose shoved hard into the hole at the toe, still considering that as a means of escape. Richard would be home soon and I had this awful vision of me being in the loo, him coming in, going straight out the back door, slipping his feet into the Crocs to go up the garden to look for me (thinking I was out there) and squashing the poor mouse, so I locked the back doors and kept the key on my person.

Five minutes before Richard walked in the mouse was still there. As he entered the house I yelled, ‘There’s a mouse in your Croc.’ He looked slightly confused but that’s nothing new and frankly, the day he stops looking confused is the day I’ll worry. We scurried to the door and he, like the Great White Hunter set about freeing the mouse. However, in those few minutes, Mr Mouse had made his own escape and there was no sign of him. Richard banged the old Crocs a bit and looked behind the shoe rack but the mouse had gone.

The following day Chea returned with a baby mouse. Dead.

No I didn’t type that twice. Well, I did, but not by mistake.

The following day I was merrily removing the tips from the broad beans, as a swarm of blackfly were attempting to move in, when Chea came trotting down the path. Again, I knew that movement. That proud, ‘Look what I’ve got. Am I not clever? Am I not a great hunter?’

‘No Chea, you are a little shit!’

Hanging from her jaws was another baby mouse – wriggling. To be honest many of the things she brings back are still alive and live to fly, or scuttle, off to tell their loved ones about their near death experience. I was instantly pissed off. First, she’d brought back what I considered to be mummy mouse, and then, one by one – baby mouse, baby mouse and baby mouse. I threw the broad bean tips at her and she ran off, dropping the mouse who raced into the shrubbery. I caught her and put her in the house.

So …Chea 2. Gail 2.

I still can’t get the idea out of my head of slipping my foot into a gardening shoe with a mouse in it. If I ever did that I would die. Seriously. I would die. Needless to say I now upend everything and bang them hard on the floor before daring to access.

Mind you, if the mouse in Richard’s Croc had passed away, and not escaped back into the wild, I just might not have bothered telling him.

Other than mice everything else in the garden is flourishing. So much so that I have lost the garden paths beneath courgette and rhubarb leaves. Mother spiders have had bumper crops of babies and they, the baby spiders, are hatching by the thousands and floating throughout the greenhouse on tiny strands. Removing baby spiders from my hair is the daily ‘thing.’

The chucks are reasonably well and enjoy dust bathing with the sun on their feathers. In fact, everything in the garden is rosy – as long as you don’t include mice in the equation.

Take care my lovelies x

Hi All

Well, it’s been a little while since I raised the old bonce above the parapet, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been doing nothing. In fact, I’ve been so busy that I just haven’t had the time to raise my head.

Obviously, a great part of my time has been wasted on trying to sort out my laptop that suddenly decided it wasn’t going to link to anything to do with the internet, and the old Dell had to be sourced from the drawer and kick-started into life.

The sweet little thing loved it, doing its best to link to everything and anything within a mere matter of ages! It battled along beautifully and I promised it faithfully that I would show total commitment to it and never again shove it back into the dark scary drawer. Then, one morning, the old rush of blood to the head occurred and I uninstalled Dropbox on the super-duper non-working laptop and hey presto…it worked. So, I quietly closed down poor Dell and …yeah, shoved it back into the drawer. I’m so fickle. But, you see, I can’t keep raiding the fridge and making tea while I wait ten minutes each time for old Dell boy to link to Facebook or Twitter or whatever, can I?

Also (drum roll) I’ve finished the next novel, Witch Ever Way You Look At It (that’s not a typo by the way) and yesterday shipped it off to my editor. ‘My editor’ Whooo hoo. Yes, I’ve decided that it’s time I went about this properly and have someone struggle through all my unnecessary dots, dashes and ellipses. I love them, like special little furry friends, but I know I use too many so…it’s time for the cull, I fear.

Also, I’ve become involved in a real love of mine, albeit a love that I haven’t experienced for some years. I have become involved as the font of all knowledge in the process of pony buying, pony handling and pony this and that, for two very dear friends Lauren and Ash. Of course, this has caused ripples of interest in Richard’s brain, and last night I caught him looking at ‘Horses for Sale in Leicestershire.’ I’ve told him that he would need a carthorse and I’ve stressed the pitfalls – and they haven’t included the actual falls. Can you imagine the damage when six-foot-two-ish Richard hits the ground from something as tall a giraffe? It would take me bloody ages to fill in the hole made in the ménage! He thinks, just because he can feed the pony (Flo) with an apple from the palm of his hand he can become the next John Wayne. Frankly, I think he’s just fantasising about the black leather boots and swishy riding whip, hardly a sound reason to lash-out a few grand on an elephant-sized equine!

And then there is the garden! Wow, what a little beauty that has been this year. Masses and masses of produce. The cupboards are bursting with jam and chutney. Thankfully, everything is coming to the end of production…except for the sodding runner beans. They breed overnight, under the cover of darkness, and come the morning they are dangling there with smiles on their faces. Richard has almost turned green with all the beans that I’ve forced him to eat. ‘Eat your runner beans and then you can have pudding,’ is the constant promise made from yours truly. Obviously, I’m lying because he’s on a diet and pudding isn’t allowed. And don’t go feeling sorry for him (especially you, Malla) because if he’s going to buy a carthorse and learn how to ride it he will need to shed a few extra pounds. Even a carthorse can only take so much!

The chucks are in chuck heaven, because now that the soft fruits and chicken-chomping stuff is no longer growing I have allowed them up into the veggie plot and they spend hours scratching through the fallen leaves, looking for, and finding, insects and bugs. And this gives me immense pleasure, not the annihilation of the bugs, but watching the chucks, happily foraging with the autumn sunshine on their backs.

And……I’ve started bread making! Yesterday’s first attempt was crap. Utter crap. Looked brilliant. Could barely get the Kitchen Devil knife through it, and the bit of crust I threw out for the birds grounded the poor things. Today I was determined to do better, and, as I type, a loaf is rising. However, ten minutes after I’d put it to rise I realised that I hadn’t put enough yeast in it so out it came and in went more yeast. So that looks like another shit attempt. But have no fear, I WILL make a success of this, or die trying.

And right on cue the little timer thingy is ringing (and I’m even using a timer) so off I trot to knock it back. See, I already have the terminology! Cool.

Take care my lovelies x