Karate Vows and Backyard Battles

Okay, today is Wednesday and it's not too late for me to practice my katas and one step spars and get enough practice to feel like I've adequately put my time in. Thursday is almost acceptable, Friday is pushing it, and by Saturday, I've already blown it. The ball is in my court, it's up to me.

I've been doing battle with some sort of critter in our backyard that's been invading our compost. I'm guessing it's a raccoon because he's tenacious and eats the corn. We saw a skunk at one point over by the bin (the cats wanted to attack but that would have been a disaster) but I'm not sure if they eat garbage. Coons, on the other hand...

Whatever be the case, I'm not sure if I just let the thing eat all the garbage it wants or try to put a stop to it. I've been engaging in the latter, with mixed results. Personally I don't have a problem with some animal eating the food we're tossing out, but man does that thing make a mess, and my feeling is that it's not a good idea to encourage foragers in your yard. We don't the animals in the woods to think that we're an all you can eat buffet. So I've been trying to patch up the holes the animal digs with posts, rocks, and dirt, which stops him at first.

But then all he does is moves to another section of the bin and digs through. It's become a bit of a cat-and-mouse game, and now our bin looks like Fort Knox. Every morning I go out there and find some new tunnel dug along with all the garbage strewn about the yard. What a slob. If he was neater about it I'd let it slide, but at this point it's become a battle, and there is no turning back. I could stop the whole charade by simply putting a barrier all around the compost bin, but that would take some time and effort, and I'm hoping in the back of my mind that he'll give up at some point. Fat chance.

So every day I just go out and drive some more stakes in.

I've been preparing the woods for storage of our wood, and there's plenty of it. I've still got about six cords uncut, and if I ever get around to cutting it, I need a place to store it. I've noticed that there are more ants on this wood than previous piles, perhaps due to the amazing amount of rain we've been getting. Kind of disconcerting. Speaking of wood, I actually started to cover up next season's wood, and should have it done within the next week, but don't hold me to that.

And adding to our responsibilities are our praying mantis'. We are actually raising praying mantis' and they are really cool, except that they eat bugs, and that means I've got to catch them. It's actually not a problem because our compost is a bug sanctuary, it's just that when I go to get them I am literally swarmed with flies. The things we do for knowledge.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.