“What falls but never gets hurt?”   ….........The rain!

The green color of our surroundings is really kicking my hormones to get outside and DO THINGS. I began digging, cutting and moving things that would have seemed impossible to do a few weeks ago. One thing I have not done is go out and stock up on plants and flowers. I am trying to stay true to my big write of last week saying to not rush out and get things before the proper time comes. Getting the goodies home and tucked in a safe place until the proper time for setting out was something I should have said last week. Maybe I am saying that because I plan on starting to check out what is available this week. I am not talking tomatoes or peppers but more in the line of flowering plants. Yes, they restock, but maybe I will miss something special that will not be restocked. The truth is that I would not know that and most likely be very happy with what I would purchase a few weeks from now. The brain is a very strong game player. The tulips and daffodils are popping up like crazy so it looks “real” spring and adds to the desire to be out  enjoying things. I hope this outdoor joy lasts for a long time, but hot weather will hose me down a bit.

The condition of the world has also affected the world of the big indoor cat, Pumpkin. All 16 pounds of him likes to hang out on the back of the chair by the computer. This is right by a big dining room window and I have the curtains pulled back so he can see and observe the outside world. Since I spend a lot of time on the computer, Pumpkin spends a lot of time observing. I will call this his regular theater. A few weeks back when we hit that unbelievable high of 85 degrees and I was in the kitchen, I felt I really needed to open the windows. This is how Pumpkin's IMAX theater came about. As background to this story, Daughter Nissa has been doing IMAX for many years for Cat, who is the cat in her household. When the weather gets warm enough to have open windows, Cat can take in all the smells, bird watching and sounds of the great outdoors. A nice padded basket is the seating of choice for CAT. When I was in the kitchen, Pumpkin jumped up and parked himself on the sink back and went crazy with delight with that happening. Ah, I said to myself, IMAX theater! The seating was not as plush as Cat's, but he did not seem to notice. Now the question is, should he pay more for viewing at the IMAX location?

The other big spring decision is when to get the 2008 orange Mustang out of storage. Of course, the insurance will need to be fully reactivated before I hit the road. I hopefully don't have to worry about more snow and salted roads. Our local road has been graded and is somewhat smooth. It sure will be so much easier to find my vehicle in the parking lots. Sylvia the Subaru looked like all the other silver or gray cars. Take a look around and you will see the huge amount of cars in that color family. The roof rack did not help that much. What did help this spring was the fact that I did have to drive on muddy dirt roads to get any place. Sylvia looked like a moving mud pile. That really cut into the look with the “city” cars. Look for a mud pile and chances were that would be Sylvia. Got fooled only a few times! Oh, we are not going to mention that the inside of the car REALLY needs a good cleaning after the long hard winter with pets and other causes for its looks.

Today we have room for a m-o-u-s-e report. I was advised to get a special kind of trap that collects the mice without bait. My single mouse traps seemed to disappear and/or were not snapping on the mice as they ate the bait. The first few days after I spent nearly $30.00 on this different type of trap, I did get 4 mice. Then nothing. I started putting little bits of peanut butter on the intake area. Nothing. I put the peanut butter in further. Nothing. I think my mice were super-fast learners and they went into training after losing a few family members. After several weeks of a no mouse count, I purchased a whole new batch of the old-fashioned regular mouse traps. That caught a lot of the newly trained mice by surprise! The mice are back to having to have funeral lunches.

Bea Westerberg          bea.in.the.wool@gmail.com