Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful Mom who has dedicated her life to raising five kiddos and to my Mother-in-Law who is currently en route to Durango (via slow boat) where she'll be able to fully enjoy the life of a Grandmother. To both of you amazing women, I raise my glass to honour who you are, and all you've been. Prost!

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Every day is Mother's Day, right? Well, not really. If it were I'd be pretty spoiled: Cayenne brought me breakfast in bed, Acacia picked sunset-coloured flowers from the garden (and put them in a vase that belonged to Nick's grandmother), and Nick cleaned the kitchen. If every day were like this, I'd be lazy and there'd be nothing to celebrate. ♥


Motherhood is pretty trendy at the moment. A squawking robin alerted us to the babies-to-be in her nest in the huge juniper by the non-plum tree. Three gorgeous blue eggs we would not have known about if Mama had just stayed quiet; there's something faulty in her species-preserving gene, methinks. I'm sure there's a lesson in this, but I'm just not seeing it...

On a sadder note, in yesterday's Herald was a story of a Mama Bear and her two cubs, one of whom had been hit and killed by a car. I'm not sure which was more heartbreaking, the photo of the little (10lb) bear's fluffy, floppy body, or the one of the mother and sibling watching from the woods, waiting for her baby to come back.

Even the plants in the garden have new baby shoots, but this spring they've been disappearing at an alarming rate. We were blaming the ubiquitous chipmunks until a huge stalk of a tree peony got chomped. Not one to stand around, Nick took action:

Certain the guilty party was in the wood pile, he taped a huge plastic sheet (the one we'd successfully protected the apple blossoms with) to the walls and ground so the critter would be easier to catch. A mouse could have escaped anyway, but this was going to be a very fat mouse... It had dragged a huge piece of peony a decent distance. Nick was pretty sure he knew who it was. Last year when he was cleaning out the fountain, he dismantled a rodent's home. It looked at Nick with huge black eyes and they stared at each for a second before he and his rabbit-like ears scurried off. Not a normal house mouse for sure, but very cute.

Nick was ready to meet him again. Bigger. One by one he tossed logs over the wall, until suddenly the mouse jumped out and tried running up the wall - only the mouse was a huge rat, he was a she, and she was so laden with newborns, she only made it halfway up the wall. Those big black eyes and upright ears slipped back into the wood pile, until Nick tossed one of the last logs and we got her to run into a plastic bin. One of her babies had fallen off so we picked him up and reunited him with his Mama. They went for a ride in the Beast (the old blue Land Rover) and we set them free in the forest, far enough away that She and Nick will hopefully not meet again.

It's hard to tell, but she's at least 6 inches long.

Be free Mama Packrat!

I was going to end the post there, but look what just arrived at the door:

I'm one lucky Mama.