Rain, Rain, GO AWAY...Raccoons, You Can Hit The Road Too.

It's official.  I am SICK of the rain.  I have been avoiding blogging about it, because quite frankly, I don't want to think about it, but I would be remised to not mention it.  It has been THE story of the spring/summer.

Last Tuesday night, we had a killer storm.  Lightening, thunder and rain.  Well, so I'm told.  Calder and I slept right through it.  I woke up to a wet lawn and deck, but didn't think much of it.  That has been par for the course this year.  Imagine my shock when I opened up my front door to get the paper and saw this:

Strange, where did all that soil come from?

It must have really rained.  My flowers are drowning.

You have got to be kidding me.  Where did all that soil go?

My tulips!  


Hugh and I have no idea where the soil went to.  Hugh figures it must have went under our steps.

I then grabbed the paper and headed for the back yard.

hmmm...no weiner roast tonight.

Is that a mud pit?  Ugh...no, just my garden.


Hugh and I had gotten rained out during some weeding earlier in the week.  You can see the patch on the right hand side we didn't get to.  It has been so frustrating.  It seems like we can never get into the garden to get it weeded, because it is always so muddy.

Finally, on Thursday of last week, I was able to get in and weed.  I also reseeded EVERYTHING.  I am hoping that we will have a nice fall and we will still get some veggies.

Here is my garden on July 30, 2009.  What are my chances of having this year's garden look that good?

Once the garden was reseeded, we headed to the lake.  My Aunt Pat and Uncle Garth were up for the weekend.  It was a great time.  Calder got dirty and wet.  What could be better?

The only glitch in the weekend was the raccoons.  I would call it a glitch.  Luke called it "awesome" when I told him what happened.

Mom and Dad have a momma raccoon and her litter camping out in the crawl space in the attic in their cabin.  Thank goodness the raccoons can't get into the living space of the cabin.  We were up on Father's day weekend and Dad and Hugh made an attempted to kill the raccoons (the live trap has had no success).  They sprayed anhydrous (fertilizer...smells like ammonia) water up in to the attic.  Hugh stood on the ground with a shovel while my dad sprayed.  The momma made an jump for it, but Hugh was on the wrong side of the cabin.  I guess it was as big as our dog Cleo, with shorter legs.  YIKES.  There was some spilled anhydrous and Dad spidey jumping off the roof when the ladder slipped out, but no dead raccoons.

That takes us to this past weekend.  My Uncle was on hand with an extra shovel and Dad decided to gas them out.  He hooked up a hose to the back of the van and shoved the tube in the attic.  With Calder ripped out of bed and taken to the park (at 8 pm....we wanted the raccoon's gassed out, not the kid!), the hunt was on. (Warning:  This story doesn't have a happy ending)

I wasn't there to see, but Dad was able to shoot one with his 22 when it poked his head out of the attic.  It fell down to the ground and Hugh hit it with a shovel for good measure.

Unfortunately, that was all they were able to get.  Aunt Pat and Uncle Garth heard the litter tip toeing around later that night.  They went back to work in the morning with the anhydrous, but weren't able to get any.  Dad is hoping that after one got killed, the momma moved the litter.  Ugh.  Let's hope so.

Calder had a 3.5 hour nap the next day.  9 pm is clearly too late (especially since Calder doesn't know what "sleep in" means).  He sat on our laps at the table the next day for an hour.  It was marvelous!  We soaked in every minute.  Dad fed him an entire bag of chips, so I know Calder was loving it!

And to everyone's shock and amazement, Calder ate a good supper after that!