Tuesday, April 21, 2009

electric mayhem

The electrical work on our basement is done!

It took Mike and I several minutes to realize we had no clue how the basement was wired, so rewiring was out of the question.

It took our electrician friend 3 nights of after-work visits to realize he needed more bits. As he's already got a real life, moving into our basement to help us wasn't an option.

It took a paid electrician less than a morning to finish off the excellent work our friend had done.

In the interim, as I had nothing to work on, I started running again (OK, slow granny shuffle, but it's definitely NOT a walk), cleaned up the front garden, moved the yukka, cut down the rest of the smoke tree in the hope that it will generate beautifully shaped new growth to replace the old, split the Karl Forrester reed grass and helped Hugh move the dishwasher.

Why did we move the dishwasher?

Mice.

Apparently they used the underside of our rarely-used dishwasher as a disco. Or an outhouse. Same end result. Much poop. It's now cleaned, and access to their disco has been foamed in. They can still get under the sink.

Hugh's plan? Trap and release. His initial plan was to flush them, as he figured they'd survive a trip through the sewers. But he decided against that, and released one in a field and one in a massively busy intersection, near a garden centre. Will they survive? It doesn't seem that likely, but they'll make better food outside of our house.

And now, a word on renewal pruning.

Renewal pruning involves cutting 1/3 of an overgrown shrub down to the ground in each of 3 consecutive years. The theory is that this will encourage the healthy, enormous root system to put up new shoots, which can be selectively pruned as required to create a brand new healthy beautifully shaped shrub. The pictures in gardening books make it look easy and idiot proof. And honestly, cutting down shrubs is something I'm good at.

The reality so far is that the shrub has sent out some new growth, mostly parallel to the ground, and the rabbits have eaten a lot of it. What we have now is an oddly shaped stump with various branches sticking out all over the place, mostly chewed up by rabbits. I am still hoping real new growth will emerge, now that there isn't a remaining old branch sucking up energy.

Next steps? In the garden, the honeysuckle must go. In the house, drywall must move from piles on the floor to the ceiling. In the kitchen, we'll hope the mice don't build another disco.

2 comments:

AB&AB said...

Any advice about pruning a raspberry bush? It is actually growing faster than the dog. Hope the mouse relocation project works, and I hope they don't come across town and move into our place. It took a long time to get rid of the ones we had - they had a very cosy nest in the bottom of a box of yarn.

Spalfy said...

Hugh gave up on humane traps. The mice were eating their way out of the traps, so they turned into a complex mouse feeding system. He's caught 20 with the new style kill 'em dead traps, which let you drop the mouse into the garbage without touching it.

I've been trying to prune our blackberries. Ouch. I think you just lop off the top chunk so it's about 4' high, and of course prune any dead canes. I fail miserably at this, our canes are in some instances so long they loop over, reach the ground and have rooted.