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Plants, Squirrels, and Colorful Language
Since my last post, my family has planted 10 pots of vegetables, 2 blueberry bushes and several strawberry plants. Caleb and Aaron dutifully water our new additions daily, unless it rains a lot. Every day we check the pots and the berry plants for signs of hope/growth. We never have planted our own food before.
This past week has been a roller coaster of emotions as far as gardening goes.
Day One - Pesky squirrels attacked the 1 of the 3 pepper plants. After the squirrel attack, Aaron bought chicken wire without a plan for how to use it. Caleb was SO excited to use chicken wire (who knew?). When it was obvious to me that Aaron was not building a squirrel deterrent, I went to investigate. He and I argued about the chicken wire, with my very mature concluding argument of "Just put up the magenta chicken wire already!"
Magenta, you ask? Yes, magenta. Rather than say any number of expletives in front of Caleb who is a walking echo machine, I chose to use actual colorful language instead. Caleb stopped in his bouncing tracks and backed me up, "Yeah Daddy! Put up the damn chicken wire already!"
Our neighbor was pushing his daughter on our swing set at the time. Charming.
Day Two - Sprouts!! Yes, despite the squirrels' best efforts we have sprouts. Some of the vegetables, like the aforementioned pepper plants, we planted from seedlings. Some of the vegetables, like pole beans, we planted from seeds. The pole beans and cucumbers sprouted! We were thrilled.
Aaron replanted pepper plants with newfound optimism.
Being silly humans, our vegetables remained vulnerable to squirrel attack due to the lack of deterrent. I did yell at the squirrels during my picnic lunch with Caleb, but apparently squirrels could care less.
Day Three - Squirrel attack. This time, the squirrels utterly destroyed 2 of the 3 pepper plants and left a delicate bite mark on the third otherwise healthy looking plant. It was like they were sending us a message - "Protect your plants or we'll take them all." The evil rodents (yes, they are rodents. Wikipedia says so. *smirk*) also sampled my dear pole beans though I still have hope for them.
Aaron talked with our neighbor J who just tore down the squirrels' condo, also known as his front porch. Aaron joked that he didn't appreciate that J's squirrels had eaten our vegetables. J is a man of few words. J's wise advice? "Shoot 'em."
I yelled some more at the squirrels, in duplicate thanks to Caleb.
Aaron returned to Home Depot to find a possibly more effective solution. We now have 10 pots of potential vegetables surrounded by plastic netting. I don't trust this netting one bit. I think the squirrels will burrow or squirm their way under the netting or perhaps gnaw their way through the plastic or the wire ties holding the netting together. I'm telling myself that this is a learning experience, so let's look at lessons learned, shall we?
Lessons Learned from Backyard Garden:
amusedThis past week has been a roller coaster of emotions as far as gardening goes.
Day One - Pesky squirrels attacked the 1 of the 3 pepper plants. After the squirrel attack, Aaron bought chicken wire without a plan for how to use it. Caleb was SO excited to use chicken wire (who knew?). When it was obvious to me that Aaron was not building a squirrel deterrent, I went to investigate. He and I argued about the chicken wire, with my very mature concluding argument of "Just put up the magenta chicken wire already!"
Magenta, you ask? Yes, magenta. Rather than say any number of expletives in front of Caleb who is a walking echo machine, I chose to use actual colorful language instead. Caleb stopped in his bouncing tracks and backed me up, "Yeah Daddy! Put up the damn chicken wire already!"
Our neighbor was pushing his daughter on our swing set at the time. Charming.
Day Two - Sprouts!! Yes, despite the squirrels' best efforts we have sprouts. Some of the vegetables, like the aforementioned pepper plants, we planted from seedlings. Some of the vegetables, like pole beans, we planted from seeds. The pole beans and cucumbers sprouted! We were thrilled.
Aaron replanted pepper plants with newfound optimism.
Being silly humans, our vegetables remained vulnerable to squirrel attack due to the lack of deterrent. I did yell at the squirrels during my picnic lunch with Caleb, but apparently squirrels could care less.
Day Three - Squirrel attack. This time, the squirrels utterly destroyed 2 of the 3 pepper plants and left a delicate bite mark on the third otherwise healthy looking plant. It was like they were sending us a message - "Protect your plants or we'll take them all." The evil rodents (yes, they are rodents. Wikipedia says so. *smirk*) also sampled my dear pole beans though I still have hope for them.
Aaron talked with our neighbor J who just tore down the squirrels' condo, also known as his front porch. Aaron joked that he didn't appreciate that J's squirrels had eaten our vegetables. J is a man of few words. J's wise advice? "Shoot 'em."
I yelled some more at the squirrels, in duplicate thanks to Caleb.
Aaron returned to Home Depot to find a possibly more effective solution. We now have 10 pots of potential vegetables surrounded by plastic netting. I don't trust this netting one bit. I think the squirrels will burrow or squirm their way under the netting or perhaps gnaw their way through the plastic or the wire ties holding the netting together. I'm telling myself that this is a learning experience, so let's look at lessons learned, shall we?
Lessons Learned from Backyard Garden:
- Planting several pots of same vegetable is good insurance but also good advertising to the local riffraff.
- Not putting up some kind of deterrent is naive at best, stupid in reality.
- Speaking expletives in code does not fool the 3 year old, given enough context.
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