Welcoming and unwelcoming

We've had our first visitors ever (over the long weekend) and we are hopeful to have more soon (pending the lifting of Provincial travel restrictions)! I must say that visitors who arrive toting rubber boots and work gloves are pretty nice visitors to have! That said, anyone who's content to just hang out and doesn't mind the flaky WiFi or the fact the hot setting on the shower tap goes to the right, instead of the left, (and such details) is a very welcome guest too.

Aside from two-legged visitors though, I've been thinking about how hard we work to welcome some two-legged and no-legged visitors while discouraging (or downright removing) others...

While the basement mice seemed to have accepted their eviction notice, their workshop relatives have taken our discouragement efforts as more of an invitation to snack. The spinning-can-with-peanut-butter-over-a-bucket-method, despite many adjustments, has had minimal success. While a couple of critters have taken the plunge and found themselves re-housed across the creek, others since have forgone the plunge and instead sidled up to the bar for a lick. However, tiny paw prints left on the tractor seat a few nights in a row have us encouraged that a feline visitor might be frequenting the shed at night. We're laying out the welcome mat for kitty!

As for the no-legged guests, we've been carefully preparing to nurture seeds and started seedlings in a new plot (and some existing ones) in the yard. We're keeping them close to the house for protection and to easily keep an eye on meeting their needs as they grow. This has been a huge effort and every day (it's been three since the first seeds hit the ground) we anxiously check their progress. Everyone still seems to be sleeping though.

Meanwhile, there are uninvited, legless, guests who predated us -- possibly by years. I imagine they initially moved into an out-of-the way area so as not to call attention to their presence. Once settled,  they began reproducing, spreading, and discouraging others from growing near them, claiming more and more territory as their own. We had no idea they were here (recall that we purchased the land under three feet of snow), but now I sometimes I think I hear them whispering at night, crawling closer. There are many weeds on the property, some innocuous, other less so but the one I'm most concerned about at the moment is Common Comfrey -- I'm taking their invasion quite personally.

So while we are fluffing soil, adding manure and fertilizers, and diligently watering the plants in the garden, I am also hacking at the leaves, lifting the plant masses, and reaching around underground to find all the snaking roots of the damnable Common Comfrey wherever I find it. Be gone, I say, you are definitely not welcome here!