along comes the evil rodent

[jinian]

I didn't post on Sunday about the wonderful time I had poking about in woods almost exactly like my childhood woods, because I was too busy planting my new salvaged-plant friends. I did some sheet mulching and put in a bunch of nice little ferns (more sword ferns, more lady ferns, new-to-the-yard deer ferns) and huckleberry bushes and one wee bleeding heart, yay! Since there were bulbs I hadn't planted yet, I put in the shade-tolerant pulchella violacea tulips next to a lovely rotting log I brought home, and surrounded them with moss. All was wonderful.

But today I got home from buying more mulch to find that squirrels had carried off some of my shallowly-planted tulips and mucked with the mosses. I didn't need to slay them until I found my sweet little bleeding heart dragged out and wilted. Squirrels suck, man! I wish I could let the cats out; they might not be effective killers, but they would at least keep the rotten tree-rats off the ground.

(Plant salvage was the best thing I've done all year. Six-foot-wide sword ferns! Salmonberry glades! Beautiful nurse logs! And the fact that there were a few invasive weeds in it just made it more like home.)

Comments

[jinian.livejournal.com]

The salvage story, by the way, is that the area we were in is being bulldozed for houses soon. Seattle and King County have a program in which volunteers collect native plants from some of these places and either put them in one of our parks or take them home, depending on the event. So it was a very little bitter, but mostly sweet -- we're saving them from certain death, the ones we save, even though there are a lot we can't.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

A varmint stole some of my stuff too, and I suspect a squirrel.

[shelly-rae.livejournal.com]

Out here in the hinterlands of Duvall, large swaths of land are being turned into homes for commuters. I've been tossing the shovel, wheelbarrel, & such in the truck and helping myself to whatever plants I want before the bulldozers move in. Sometimes I move plants into other people's yards, into the local parks, or put them in pots at the curb where people take them & give them homes. If I feel this way about plants can you imagine the terror my husband feels when we see someone giving puppies away at the grocery store?
Anon

[cheesepuppet.livejournal.com]

Is there some equivelent of an owl frightener for squirrels? Like, setting a statue of a big, hungry-looking squirrel next to your garden? Maybe dressed in boxing apparel?