Saturday, July 23, 2011

Vigilance

Critter hole
Some folks wonder why I wander around the gardens so often during the day.  I'm out in the yard ALL the time.  Yet I can't NOT go walk-about.  Things happen so quickly in a garden.  They are not the static landscape many people assume.  No.  It's a living, breathing and ever-changing world out there in the yard and it's waaay more compelling to watch than any TV show.

For the past couple of days I've spent an over amount of time inside to escape the oppressive heat and humidity.  So when I forayed out yesterday in the early a.m. I found a serious hole just a few feet from the crab bed.  Good grief.  Something stole in under the radar and went to town.  There was a lot of torn grass strewn about.  It's way bigger than any chipmunk hole I've encountered before, yet with the roots it had to dig around I can't see how anything much larger could squeeze in there.

So I set a trap, covered it with an overturned bin, and will await results.

In other news, we got another .6" of rain on Friday!!  Twice the rain pounded down fast and hard.  And, being the obsessive type (I-just-gotta-know) that I am, I actually spent part of the 2nd downpour up on the sunroom roof.  (I truly truly don't recommend this action to anyone, especially during a storm!)  Anyway, I discovered one of the reasons the previous deluge soaked the room below.  That storm had blown a bird nest into the 2nd floor bedroom gutter, causing it to overflow and waterfall right onto the roof of the sunroom.  Water washed uphill under the window ledges (a mere 2" above the sunroom roof) and found leaks into the room below.  At least now I know why things happened.

There have always been drafts in the sunroom because it was never properly sealed to the side of the house.  But at long as the gutter didn't overflow, most of those seams never got wet enough to leak.   Now with the gutter unclogged the sunroom is dry again.  But I'm still going to have to do some serious work on the sunroom roof.

Meanwhile, back to more heat and humidity.  At least now I won't have to hold back on the rain-dancing.  ;-D 

6 comments:

  1. We really need rain. Badly. Today's forecast is record heat, near 110 with humidity. Yesterday there were rumbles of thunder with dark skies all day, not a drop of rain. So frustrating.

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  2. Can't wait to see what you trap.
    nellie

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  3. Good luck with the trap; we are still waiting to catch the corn eater!

    Lucky you on the rain.

    I agree that all gardeners should be doing the walk-about daily....pull the odd weed, check water needs see a new bloom open, and just plain enjoy what you have created.

    Glad you got to the bottom of the leaking rain. Would caulking help with the draft issues?

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  4. Kyna - use your mojo, girl.

    Glenda & BMG - Nothing in the trap, in fact no sign of traffic there at all. If no result in a day or two I will just fill in the hole.

    I've caulked all popped up nail over the years, but these 'seam' leaks involve improper flashing up under the bedroom windows behind the old vinyl siding. It needs stripped and re-flashed. *sigh*

    We got another .3" rain last night. The high pressure in the central states is forcing all the moisture through the great lakes and we are getting more storms than normal this July, a mixed blessing to be sure.

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  5. I'm glad you found the source of the leak. Gotta watch those birds, sometimes they actually build IN the gutters. We struggle to keep house finches from building in the rafters of our patio cover. The last thing we want is for poop to fall on us while we're out there drinking our coffee! We took down nests for what seemed like a million times before the couple that was building finally gave up and went somewhere else.

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  6. Ilene - at mom's old house she had 2" high (open topped) nesting boxes put in the corners. She always had finches or sparrows use them. She never had any poop probs since the parents take away baby poop. Still, there weren't any open rafters for them to hang around on so no overhead poop probs. It's amazing where a bird thinks a nest should go sometimes!

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