Gardening. That’s using the term quite loosely. More like waging war against gophers and moles and weeds. Al helped me and we spent pretty much the whole weekend getting rid of weeds (not done yet) and scoping out a game plan for the critters.
For the uninitiated, gophers are just like you see in Winnie the Pooh cartoons – come up, look soft and furry and cute, and pull your plant down out of sight before you can reach for your BB gun, hose, shovel, or whatever. You know the arcade game Whack-a-Mole? You think that’s cruel and unusual? Just let a few of those suckers into your garden and you’ll be down at the arcade venting your frustrations on the fake ones and hoping to maybe carry your skills over to your garden. Moles don’t actually eat plants, they just destroy the integrity of the garden as they burrow through eating bugs and things. Lovely.
We tried gopher traps – didn’t like those for obvious reasons. Tried the solar powered noisemaker thingies that you stick in the ground. Worked for awhile. Now they tick tick tick away and the critters just ignore it. Put in euphorbia which they are supposed to not like. One plant looks dead, not sure what happened there. Also put in spurge which they are also supposed to not like. They were left alone until Ed the Dog was doing his part to get at the critters (he can dig all he wants to that end…) and dug it up.
So…now trying this non-toxic to pets powder that is apparently blood meal and chili powder. You find the hole, stick a cup of the stuff down the hole, also strew it around your plants. I’m supposed to do this every day for a week, so like my Mom in her Rambo bandana, carrying the American flag and a super water blaster gun in her war against the neighborhood cat that was eating her birds (true story, we have pictures), I will be out there all week looking for new burrows and carrying my sack of chili powder.
P.S. I didn’t get it out from under my fingernails after I was through, and then rubbed my eye. Critters:1 Mary:0. Let the games begin…
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my eye is burning just thinking about that, Owee. Years ago when we use to plant a vegetable garden we waged war against the deer who like to eat the new sprouts and the coons who liked everything else. My final garden happened when two days before we were ready to pick our corn coons came through, pulled every ear off the stalks and took at least one bite out of every one of them. That was it. We have so many people around in summer that sell their produce out in front and you can have all the zucchini you want. Usually people are begging you, promising their first born if you just please take some of their zucchini. Now we just let everyone else wage war and enjoy what they manage to harvest. Life is so much more peaceful
That is so true about the neighbors begging you to take food! We are the happy recipient of our neighbor’s peaches each year. That’s quite a story about the corn – we had that happen with our young orange tree a few years back, except it was squirrels. The tree is getting more mature now and bears more fruit so we at least get a few. I was ready to put out a crate of oranges from Costco and let them eat those…; Ed the Dog helps keep them at bay too now.