This is a glorious time in the garden. We’re in full bloom right now. The love-hate relationship I have with Irises? Current status: Love them!
And despite the ant nuisance in the house, the Peonies need them to pop. But honestly, I even had an ant in my pants! But the real test has been the recent sighting of my old pal the garter snake.
Over the last few years I’ve tried to tame my phobia of snakes, and learn to live and appreciate their finer qualities. Like the fact they like to dine on mice and crickets.
But when I spotted not just one, but two garter snakes slithering from behind my siding, I became a little unnerved. They usually hang out by the brush pile, not this close to the house….I imagined that there’s a whole nest of them back there, and suggested to my husband that we tear the siding off the house immediately. His response? “Don’t worry about it, snakes can’t climb.”
Are you kidding me? Snakes love to climb, and from behind the siding, they can easily scale the wall, access the attic, enter the crawl space in the bedroom closet, form a tangled ball of hissing and flickering tongues and drop into my bed while I’m sleeping!
Later in the day I was told to put a cork in it, hub didn’t want to hear another word about snakes in the wall. “We should give the glory to the garter snake, after all, the snakes are probably the reason why we didn’t have any mice for the first time in 10 years.” All this time, I thought it was the Irish Spring.
Later that evening, I stepped out to survey the siding for signs of movement and discovered that my old cranky Border Collie had been busy protecting our property. He didn’t get them all, though, I saw another one poke his head out today.
What else could we use? Police badge was out of the question, she wasn’t a cop. The town mascot is a Beaver. 
