Yesterday I received this lovely, thin quilt on a wonderful online sale at JCPenneys. Love that place for quilts! It’s a very good thickness for summertime. I got the shams to match.
It’s going to be 100 degrees tomorrow. And 101 the next day. So I’ve decided to “bring on the blues” in my house. Maybe it will make the weather a little more tolerable outside if I’m soothed by blues inside.
The blue and white pillowcases, above, were an eBay buy a few years ago. The cat pillow, below, is one I appliquéd and sewed a long time ago.
If you look below, you’ll see that I also appliqued and quilted two cat wall hangings.
The Terminix guy came this morning. He brought two of these black boxes, seen below. (Looks rather CIA-ish, doesn’t it?) The plan is that the rats go inside and eat the poison. The rat will then seek water (naturally, I have the convenient pond and waterfall). He said they might be coming from the water drain across the street at the bank.
One of the boxes is placed outside my fence in the alley, and one is perched underneath a birdhouse.
I told him I see them running along the fence at night, peeking out from my sun and red mirror. He goes over and pulls this sun away from the fence just a bit, and a little nest falls to the ground.
So I decided I’d better call my elderly neighbor in the garden home next to mine, and tell her there are rats in the neighborhood. In other words, keep your garage door closed and watch out for the snakes they might attract. She said she’d already seen them in her little flower gardens, and had taken down her birdfeeders. (Don’t you know the poor birds have to pay the price for this!)
I told her she would see the black box behind my fence, and not to be alarmed by it. I was afraid someone might think a terrorist had left the nondescript black box there. (Yes, I know I have a rather vivid imagination. But you never know.)
I can just envision police cars surrounding the alley. A bomb squad alerted. They might even think the big bank across the street is the actual target. (Seeing as how people aren’t thinking too kindly of banks right now.)
Now wouldn’t that turn my hopefully ordinary June into something exciting?
Well, to me it doesn’t really seem all that far-fetched, and I’ll tell you why. A few months ago there were arsonists burning churches in this and surrounding towns. One Sunday I’m in the midst of a decoupage project, and the doorbell rings. I go to the door to find an ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) agent standing there. They ask me to come outside. So there I go with my hands outstretched due to the decoupage glue all over them.
There is a church about a block south of me. The agent tells me that someone had broken in the church the night before, but had been scared away. They wanted to know if I’d heard anything (like the alarm) the night before. I tell them no. This is before I learned that my neighbor Ken had already been interviewed by one of the many agents scouring the neighborhood. And he had obligingly told them, “Go ask Brenda. That woman can hear a mouse dropping on a cotton pad.” (Gee, thanks Ken, I said to him later.) The agent tells me the church break in has marks of the same “MO."
My house is the first garden home on the street. I stood outside my fence (with Modge Podge drying on my hands), and watched as they went about picking up bits of trash in my yard. Thinking the suspects could have thrown trash with their prints on them out their car window.
The agents used gloves and put the trash in evidence bags. Then stuck little orange flags in my yard to show exactly where they’d taken the debris from.
I didn’t write about all this because an arrest wasn’t made for awhile. But not much later two young men were arrested. The alleged arsonists, that is. And they’re now in jail awaiting trial.
So from that experience, I know very well how exciting ordinary life can suddenly get in my neighborhood. One minute I’m working on a decoupage project. And the next I’m standing out in my yard with dried glue all over my hands, watching them pick up tiny pieces of debris in my yard. Leaving orange evidence flags in their place.
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