House Woes

A few more pictures of Cary and Greg clearing out the yard about a month ago. You can see Aidan in the back of the first picture playing with a stick. My uncle Wayne had trimmed our tree and I think the boys spent hours playing with the limbs that had been trimmed off.

So a few weeks ago, I went to bed and as I was laying there I heard a scratching in the wall. I then remembered my mom telling me a long time ago that in the spring they would get birds or bats in the walls and they would die in the wall and stink up the room. Oh goody. So I went and scared the crap out of woke up Cary who was sleeping watching tv on the couch. We fretted about it and then ultimately decided that there wasn't anything we could do but listen to the poor animal scratching in our wall and Cary would try and plug up holes on the outside of the house. So, I got to listen to the scratching for the next 2-3 nights until it died. Ugh. 

We were hoping that was the end of it and that the smell wouldn't be too bad, but no....a few nights later I hear a scratching in the wall. Again! I woke Cary up at 5:00 in the morning to tell him so, he wasn't too happy about that.

Rinse and Repeat.

Double UGH.

Then the smell hit.....O.M.G. The smell. 

The stench was so awful I started sleeping in the living room because it was making me sick, it got so bad almost the entire side of the house was unbearable. Finally, last Friday night Cary decided that something had to be done, like clean the dead bodies out of the wall or something, so he borrowed a wet/dry vacuum from his parents and went to work. He found out the hard way that the vacuum vented out the other side, so we find out that it was mice in the wall and Cary just vented mice remains all over our bedroom.

Long story made short... there were about 20 dead mice in the wall, the reason people thought it was birds or bats was because the mice were getting in the attic and then in our closet there is a box for the cold air return and they were falling down there into the way and on the cross brace and that's where they were piling up.

 Cary and I were up until 2:30 AM that morning wiping down every surface in our room with clorox wipes, shampooing carpet, washing all clothes, bedding, curtains, lamp shades, etc... 

Good times, good times.

The good news is that it smells better, and Cary scoured every surface of the house and filled in all holes so here's to hoping that we don't get anymore critters into the walls or contract the hantavirus. ☺

The Yard (August 2013 update)

This just may turn into a gardening blog, and this is why you take pictures...☺

I've been meaning to post these for a couple of weeks, so already when I look at these I see how much we've already done since I took these.

It's amazing to me how much progress we've made in a year, I never would have imagined that the yard would look like this already. A year ago we were bringing in dirt to build the yard up so that we could plant lawn.

We've done a lot of work! It's been fun though, huh Cary?

The mystery tree.
It was a little bush when we first moved in, and I've been slowly trimming it up to be a tree, and I thought I knew what kind of tree it was, but I started to realize I was wrong.
We finally correctly identified it yesterday (it's a Mulberry tree), and it's going to have to go as it will not fit in the space that we have here.

In the middle of this picture is a rose bush that we salvaged from Teresa's old yard before they knocked down the house. It's doing impressively well. ☺

Another rose bush that we saved from Teresa's old yard, and for most of the Summer we thought it was dead, and then it finally started growing and it's so pretty!

I'm loving this butterfly bush

We salvaged these 4 Euonymus bushes from the trailer yard  and on the end is an Arrow wood Viburnum bush.

One of our Pear trees. Both pear trees have fruit this year, but we only have ONE apple on our apple tree. No peaches this year.

The poor bush that looks dead is another Viburnum and in it's glory days, I really loved this bush. It's not liking life right now, but I'm hoping by next Spring it will be ready to come back to party!

This is my "Bombshell" hydrangea. So far I love it and I hope it survives the Winter.

 At this point it started raining on me, so I had to come back a few days later to finish taking pictures.

I'm trying to propagate roses under the glass jars. ;)

Close up of my hydrangea

The lilac bush has been there since the glory days with Fay and Wally. I just trimmed it really good last year and so this year it's looking pretty good.
I planted a weeping peach tree (in front of it in this photo). Hoping it makes it through the Winter, it kind of had a rough start.
In front of that (in the picture) is a rambler rose that we also salvaged from the trailer yard. (I think Anita planted it?)

You can't tell, but I have two rose bushes in there... and that's my freak Marigold bush. I had to cut it back so that my roses can get some light. Theoretically, the marigolds are supposed to help with pests getting on the roses, but 3 of my rose bushes have aphids, so clearly they aren't a lot of help.

The two little trees we planted here, the one in the front of the picture is a "Robinson" crabapple, and the one further back is an Eastern Red Bud.



The pile of bricks and rocks waiting to be put to good use. ☺