Here is the state of the nation:

1) Hedgerow House occupant, Doris, put an announcement on, where else, her hedge, to say that she wasn't putting out any more free stuff. No explanation. Hopefully this situation will change because, dash it all, it was most entertaining for the likes of me.

2) ElsieSkunk has gone off and married someone else. At least for the time being. It may have something to do with the Berlin Wall I constructed outside the crawlspace in one of my less critter friendly moments. (Sorry Wynn, couldn't help myself). Usually when I do this, the critter comes back the very next day.


3) The weather has turned. Fall is approaching. And I have to tell you, I am not amused. Up with this, I will not put, as Winston Churchill used to say.
4) The house down the road that has a death sentence imposed on it, is still standing. I maintain a vigil night and day. Well something like that.


5) What is this weird picture? I hear you shriek. Well there is a house down the road with a stone statue in the front garden and I really like it. Usually statues in the garden in this neighbourhood get snatched au milieu du nuit, but this one is so frigging big that they'd need a tow truck. Its great.

Messing about with the grapevine picture...

This is one of the blogvilles I visited this week. Quite a nice town I thought.

I had this offering for dinner on my travels this week. Of course I didn't finish it. Underneath was a rather delightful couscous dish which made a pleasant contrast with all that gravy. Great tasting meal, I'd give it a strong 8.5 out of 10.

You know, apart from crows, I think grapevines could take over the world. In our yard, they would grow twenty feet if you'd let them. The neighbour on one side has just returned after being abroad for three months, and I swear the grapevine has completely taken over his backyard. Yuri has been hacking away at it for about a week now trying to bring some semblence of order to the place.

I've been on the road for the last week so I have not caught up with Simon Says in the elevator to find what ails him. But I am on to the case.

I have taken six flights in the past six days. Its been a bit frustrating having to check in toothpaste and contact lens fluid in the main baggage. In the lounge while you waited for your bucket of flying bolts, you could buy a cup of coffee but they would not supply you a lid, as they did not allow you to take it on board. Hopefully this will all calm down soon. But the real problem was when I arrived back in BlogTown and waited to pick up my luggage. It look a while for the bags to be deplaned, at least twenty minutes before anything started moving on the carousel. Then they all came at once and everyone grabbed their bags and left. Except me. My bag never arrived. I made two flights that day, and apparently it never left the first location. What have they got against a purple suitcase with a red ribbon? Such a nuisance. Since you can hardly bring anything on board the plane as carry-on baggage these days, I had checked in almost everything. All my trip notes, my toilet bag and my pet boa constrictor (ok, maybe I exaggerate a little).

There is good news to this story. 48 hours after landing, I got a call in the early morning to tell me my bag had finally arrived at the airport, and would I be home if they delivered it my door ? Sure, come on down. No idea why it was delayed and when the purple bag with the red ribbon arrived, no explanation was given : "I'm just the delivery guy". I'm just glad to have it back. This is the second time this has happened to me, fortunately it has been about a decade since the first time. I hope there's a least ten years before the next disappearance.

I met Simon Says

I was leaving work yesterday afternoon and stepped into the elevator and hit the "Main" button. A couple of floors later, a short gentleman, 55-ish, in a brown suit got on. He was holding some books. I'll call him Simon. I've never seen him before. We both looked at the monitor in the top corner, which indicated that the weekend weather was going to be good.

Me: Well its going to be a fine weekend.
Simon: (sighing) Yes.
Me: I'm glad its Friday.
Simon: (unintelligible response).
Me: You look like you've had a rough week.
Simon: Yes, but next week's going to be worse.
Me: I'm sorry to hear that. I hope things get better.
Simon: (sighing deeply) It won't get better until November.

Before I had a chance to ask more, another gentleman got on the elevator and Simon just sighed to himself and did not volunteer any more information.

With very little to go on, I was trying to work out what would be so bad in August but wouldn't get better until November. I'm pretty sure he was talking about a work situation. Maybe he works for a skiing company and is waiting for the snows of winter. Or maybe he is just professionally miserable. It will remain a mystery, until perhaps I meet him in the elevator and obtain the next clue.

I'm keeping this picture for posterity because I think this house is going to be knocked down any day now. And I think if a little loving care was put into this one it would look so good. But no, its going to be flattened and a monster be put in its place.

And along by the blogtrain is this tree, which I've photographed before. It stands out because of its branches at higher levels, and hardly any branches below.

Here is our sturdy blogtrain yesterday evening, with some blurring and watercolour added for good measure.

Ethel came back the very next night...

Complete disaster. Ethel seems to have taken umbridge at the smelly human sprinklings around the front, and become the Incredible Hulk. Several large slabs have been removed from the opening of the hole. She's got back into the crawlspace. Well to be honest I don't know whether she is in or out, and I'm not inclined to test out either theory in any detail at this moment. I need to rethink this one. Time to retire to the pub to contemplate this over a beer or six.

Just watering the garden .... move right along. Nothing to see.

While Ethel isn't exactly living in the crawlspace, she is making frequent pungent visits. Each morning I've been putting up new barriers to stop her digging down below the house. She's a persistent beastie. I see piles of earth strewn around; and brown patches and scuffs of grass on the lawn where she's been messing about. I've been researching skunk deterrents. My correspondent, Grace kindly wrote with a website advocating putting "fox urine" around the perimeter. I introduced the topic at work, as you do. There was an immediate enthusiastic roundtable discussion, where every known (and lesser known) skunk deterrent was regaled. The consensus was that urine of any carnivore would do. This piece of information got my attention.

So I bounded off home to Gregoire and asked him to do his duty around the bushes in front of the house. He said he couldn't go and do that, especially since I had massacred the laurel hedge and there was no privacy. Oh my God. Oh well, now I am looking to make alternate arrangements. But so far the pot outside the bathroom hasn't been used. Maybe I'll sneak out into the garden after midnight but hopefully I won't meet my black and white friend the moment my back is turned....

Late Edition update: Mission accomplished. The liquid deterrent is in place.

Quite a few houses in our neighbourhood have these paint marks on the ground around them, some kind of measurement. Its a sign for the invading aliens from the beyond the galaxy intent on coming to live in this neck of the woods. I hope they like artichokes.

Actually I think they are planning to knock the house down and replace it with some enormous dwelling with half an inch of garden round the perimeter. I wouldn't mind but a couple of them are really pretty places with a lot of character. Even houses are thrown out with the trash these days. I guess that means there will be more fodder for the wandering photographic muse....

Many thanks for the suggestions about the skunk - I'm on to it. Meanwhile back on my evening walk yesterday, across the way a little, I came across this elusive creature.

The reason for the sudden movement was to check out this ever so nonchalent being...

Skunks, smokin' crows and beds for just about everyone... just a normal day around this bloggerhood.

This is near our front door. If you sent the orange powder you see in the top of the picture to the lab (I've always wanted to do that, just for the heck of it), you'd find it was cayenne pepper. The large black ominous looking pipe is exactly what you jolly well think it is - a specially designed vaccuum cleaner embedded in the ground that will suck up skunks and other fourlegged creatures before you can say "There is a God after all." Ok maybe not, its just a regular drain, but surely to goodness, I had you going there for a fraction of a second.

Yes I have officially gone bananas. No, ok, we were woken at about five this morning by the lunatic skunk who was either trying to get in or out of our crawlspace. I suspect "in" sounds about right, MrsSkunkville being nocturnal. MrsS obviously does serious weightlifting at the gym as there were quite sizeable stones being flung willy-nilly in all directions, and if I might add, a term at finishing school would do her no harm, if she were allowed within a mile of place. I'm sure they'd teach her a thing or two about personal hygiene while they were at it.

But I digress. Anyway initially I put a large brick in the hole to stop any more entering or exiting but then I fretted about it all day in case I'd blocked the critter in, and she was sobbing and sighing but more seriously, getting pissed off with noxious consequences. I do not want to do her any harm. I just want her to leave. So when I came home from work, the house stunk a bit, so I rolled the boulder away from the cave, but for good measure left a dose of cayenne round the entrance. The good book says they don't like the stuff. I know it might sounds cruel, but either the fourlegged or the two legged occupants have to leave, and we're not moving. This is not the Stinkville Motel. Skunk, get thee to a nunnery, or basically anywhere out of here.

Well you can't really see what I'm really getting at in this photo. So we have a bit of rain. The occupants of this house must think its winter, because they have a roaring fire blazing in the hearth, from all the smoke coming out of the chimney. But then there are several crows (not the dead ones from yesterday, thankfully) fighting each other for the privilege of sitting on the chimney pot. Quite the scuffle going on there amongst the murder of crows, each trying to get prime seating on the warm stack.

I could not resist this one. The sign on the garage says "NO DUMPING".

and this one comes complete with headrest, mighty fine it is too, apart from being a heavily used, sopping wet mattrass. Yours for the taking.

Interesting pattern on this bed, I'd reckon.

A switch was flicked overnight and today it's been raining heavily, something we've not seen for a while. So this evening what did I see in the alleyways - beds, beds and more beds. Like someone is going to want these after all that rain - not likely.

Two Dead Crows - and whatta you got?

Alright, alright, I know, this blogging by pictures is easy enough. You just upload them and away you go. But then its easy to get by without writing much.

I've not a lot of time because Gregoire will be screeching for his supper. Which is not quite fair because we take turns to cook. And even I have worked out that it is my turn this evening.

Ok crows are in the title so we'll talk crows. So you see, down the alleyway in the last week we saw two stone dead crows. Not thirty feet from one another. West Nile, I hear you croak ? Well who knows. Crows are pretty sharp customers, I would doubt they got poisoned. There have been a lot of vermin around here, so there's probably rat bait in every block. We check the local municipal information on crows. If you get the darned bird into the lab with 48 hours it will be checked for West Nile.

Well of course our two dead-uns did not make it to the lab. I could have taken pictures, but that seemed a bit gratuitous. They've been flattened a few times by local cars so are as flat as a board. I found out today though that they still stench to high heaven, as I took pity upon them on my litter pick-up route, and carted them away, and disposed of them.

Talking of smells, I think the skunk has come back to live. We've blocked every hole imaginable to the crawlspace, but he/she obviously still thinks this is the Motel Six or something. Each evening around 10pm, the "smell" appears and out I go on to the deck in the hopes of seeing the creature, and probably just as well, I don't, otherwise I could get a nasty dose of something.

Which reminds me, I must away to sort out the evening meal...

There are lots of bike routes in our neighbourhood. Which is great because theoretically on those streets there are less cars.

I wonder if snails and flamingoes usually get so close..

and the darlek was back again this year : "You will be exterminated..."

The phoenix got a lot of attention, rightly so...

We were recently out at a Lantern Festival - if you check the blog a year ago you'll see similar pictures. Well this year we went and there were many imaginative lanterns, this pig being one.

This is such a lovely garden. Sure there's a bit of morning glory getting in on the act on the right, but whole effect is bright, vibrant and colourful.

In our neighbourhood there are so many avid gardeners. This is a kiwi tree, and there were hundreds of kiwis. Every branch was loaded. I sure hope the occupier of the house like kiwis because there's enough for fruit salad every day until Christmas.

This is a view walking along by the blogtrain. It feels a bit like the Berlin wall, though not as a oppressive. I imagine this path would have been quite pleasant before the blogtrain came along, not that it is too shabby now. Its quite secluded, with trees all along the way.

Just in case you run short, there was a bit of money in this tree. The catch here is that if you actually got to the money, you would probably break your neck. It was in a tree, just out of reach.

The amount of stuff to be given away in our neighbourhood is quite incredible. Thing is, you haven't a clue whether it works until you get it home. This lot was quite tempting but we resisted. We have actually got a CD player, video player and Lord knows what else, but thanks for offering...

A yard with a rather terratorial cat. I wonder does she realize she is now a blog star?

We were out on a stroll the other day, and came across a coat hook in the woods, complete with coat....