You might have a deer problem

... if your cedar hedge looks like this.

This is the neighbour's one-day hedge, which looks like its really just going to only ever be deer fodder.  You can see this thwarted promise all over the city.

At local garden centres in Calgary, the first question we wanted to know is whether a plant was winter hardy. Here, it's if a plant is deer resistant.  There are many webpages dedicated to gardening and planning for the unwelcome visitors, but we usually rely up on a liberal application of Plantskydd.

Maybe it's the water?

If there's a Hollywood producer out there on the search for a horror film location and wants weird ambiance from the trees, I'd like to submit my neighbours yards for candidacy.

I've heard the expression "swamp spruce" used to refer to particularly Charlie Brownish type of trees.  I'm not sure if it applies here .. these go beyond sparse-branches-but-sorta-redeemable-with-lights variety of tree .. these trees are the stuff you tell ghost stories to your kid brothers about.  Bring on the nightmares.

Weekend Spy Mission

The neighbors have a cat.  A kitten, to be more precise.  A kitten with the run of the neighborhood and  our lawn, flower beds and back patio. He likes to be with people and will spend hours chasing bugs and rolling in the needles and sap under the cedars while you work in the garden.

He is oh so squeeable and I'm rather chagrined to say .. everything my cats are not.  Oh, Murray and Mr. Tippy are adorable in their way .. but they are definitely not cuddlers and oh please do not try to pick them up .. they had just about as much of that nonsense a couple weeks after they were born.  They'll occasionally jump up in lap if it belongs to Bruce and it happens to be that special time of day that is their own particular Daddy hour.  Mr. Tippy gets his time in while Bruce is relaxing after the morning rush and Murray gets nap time in the afternoon. Once in a long while, Murray will come snooze on my lap and Mr. Tippy cuddles up with us at bedtime.

The neighbor's kitty, who goes by the name of Spy this week (Whiskers last week) is one of those charming little fellows that loves to see you coming and will drop what he's doing to purr like a little lawn mower.  He wants to cuddle, preferably up in your arms so he can rumble his way to sleep on your chest.  I miss cats that like to purr and cuddle and .. well there's nothing quite like a cat pn your chest to get you off to a great nap.

A couple of weekends ago, Spy's family was away for the weekend and it seems Spy was lonely for company, following a young girl home many, many blocks from here. She and her parents brought him back just as we returned from a night celebrating Richard and Cécile's 5th Canadian anniversary.  I offered to take him in and although he couldn't come into the house, he made himself right at home in our garage. It was almost a shame to give him back on Sunday evening when his family returned.  It's a good thing kittens and kids go together like peanut butter and jelly or I might have been tempted more sorely.

New Neighbor

Meet Squirt!

Chloe is her real name, but she answers to Squirt.  Excitable as all get out, you have to be careful about picking her up because she will ... well, squirt.  

I love this puppy.  She's a digger and has found multiple ways to get out of her fenced yard already.  I'll drive up and she'll come running over to my driveway and as soon as the car door is open, she'll hop in and wiggle around the floorboards under my feet.  My heart melts when she does that.

I'll fuss over her for a few minutes, toss sticks for her for a few more and eventually pick her up and lock her back in her yard before I head into the house.  As I close the garage door, I hear the muffled, plaintive whines because she still wants to play.  My heart melts a bit more when she does that.

Whenever I am in the area along with her owners, she's really in a quandary trying to decide who is more exciting and she runs in circles from one to the other.  When I snapped this picture, her tail was wagging so hard you'd have thought she'd shortly achieve liftoff.   So I think its safe to say we're both besotted with each other.

Lace and sunshine

This might be my favorite window in the entire house.

Can't you just smell the fresh air coming in that window?  The butterfly bush outside the window adds a fragrance that is somewhat like lilac, somewhat like lavendar ... something in between that is hard to define.

The window is on our second storey, so the bush is fairly large.  I noticed today that it was taking up a great portion of the neighbor's yard on the other side of the fence .. so we'll have to go do something about that.  I'd be a bit keener to be a good neighbor if there wasn't a pit bull on the other side of that fence .. a pit bull who has just moved in, so we are strangers to him.  Something tells me we might not be exactly speedy on the pruning.

Shangri-La

Today's post found me off wandering into Lantzville, which is a small town on the northern edge of Nanaimo that gradually found itself surrounded by city on its landward side.  If our realtor had shown us places in Lantzville when we moved to the coast six years ago, I'm pretty sure we'd be living there today instead of the city proper.  Maybe we'd be living on Shangri-La Road.

And what's does Shangri-la look like?  Trees of spun gold, certainly. 

But mostly, it's a comfortable, quiet street where everyone knows each other and your pets, which is necessary when they wander off to snooze under the old vehicle parked in your yard, or in the cedar hedge.

This last has actually happened to us.  While they lived next door, our neighbors had a wonderful fluffy grey and white cat that adored our garden.  He liked people and would come up to the window to talk to us or Murray and Mr.  Tippy.  Strangely, the pair of our cats weren't all that territorial when it came to Fluffy.

During the summer, our neighbors moved and Fluffy disappeared from our lives.  We've recently found him back here though, sleeping in the sunshine below our cedar hedge, perhaps dreaming of the squadron of birds who land on our lawn to peck at the seeds and bugs. 

Bruce ran into our old neighbors the other day to find that they are now living only a few blocks away.  Turns out Fluffy is a bit of a traveller, having covered large distances to get back here.  Apparently, he likes the neighborhood.

An old shed at the corner of Shangri-La and Lantzville.

Across the road, the view is more rural than urban

A complicated and elegant plan ...

Here at Neuco HQ, we strive to use the most up-to-date, sophisticated technology available. Never satisfied with garden-store variety tools, we manufacture our own to exacting specifications.

To wit ...

Yes, that is a Murchie's Coffee grass-seed spreader.  Gotta use the best!

It was a gorgeous day and Bruce took the opportunity to get our somewhat dented and bruised lawn on the road to recovery.  As I write this, he's out there raking, seeding and fertilizing our Back 40 in anticipation of wetter weather, ideal growing conditions for nurturing new lawn.  I'm pretty sure you Albertans think we're nuts .. after all, planting season is May/June!  Ahh .. in BC .. we do things differently.

I offered a great deal of verbal support for him, even carried a bag or two of fertilizer and fetched coffee.  There are no lengths I will not go to in order to support his dream of a green lawn!  *snicker*  (that was poking fun at myself, by the way)

You can take the boy out of Alberta .. but he'll still wear plaid flannel.

I clicked off a few shots of the garden for you .. not a lot to see right now, so I included the neighbor's sunflower. 

Rod and Debbie's house

Another update for Ralph.  Rod says this will be ready for October renters.

September 15, 2010

They're doing a bit of landscaping today.  I'll keep ya posted!

Duck!

Looks like the neighbour's kids have decided upon a pastime for the day ...

The Neighbour's New Place

When Ralph and Debbie visited us in June this year, our neighbors below us were in the midst of a flurry of construction activity.  At that point, foundations had been poured, the house framed .. and then  we all watched as another floor went up on top of the other two and the roofline encroached ever closer to blocking our view of the ocean.  Now, this wouldn't have been a cause for general alarm, but we have only two smallish views of the ocean and they are important to the resale value of our house.

Ralph asked me to send him pictures as the construction went along and I'm pleased to say I've had the port in my computer repaired and am able to download from my camera with ease. So .. without further ado, Ralph .. here you go:

June 11.  Roofline getting closer!

 
This is about a week after Ralph and Deb hopped on their bike and took off for the Alberta border.

June 24:  Ocean view unharmed  - whew!

Jul 12:  Not much going on since.

The house sat like this throughout most of July and August.  Now that September is here to remind us of the imminent arrival another chilly, wet winter ... the banging and pounding have picked up again.

The Forest Pansy tree in the foreground is leafing out rather nicely, don't you think? Look at the color change in the next picture.

Sept 5:  Siding is up and concrete poured.  Ocean in background!