Do you know what really chomps my asters? Bunnies. OK, a growing family of rabbits that live behind the house in the woods. It started with one, last summer, that was seen eating clover in the yard but left the flowers undisturbed. Now, though, they’re attacking my flowerbeds with happy abandon. I’ve tried sprinkling and spraying animal deterrents around the area with only partial success. Now I’m bringing in the nuclear weapons.
My grandfather had a philosophy about cars. He always said that if you filled a car with gas, changed the oil, and put air in the tires, it should run forever. That’s all a car should need. I feel that same way about plants. If I water them and give them fertilizer every so often along with a passing compliment and the sun comes out occasionally, they in turn should reward me with copious blossoms. Many do, but some just shrivel up and die, like the poppies I’ve tried two or three times now. Nothing. How can they do that to me? I take it as a personal affront. There are the mystery plants too. They look very nice the first year, getting my hopes up. You guys are perennials. That means, you come back every year. Don’t give me, “The winter was too cold. My roots froze.” Or the blue iris I put in just the right spot for visual effect. The landscapers with their blowers in the spring chewed it up a bit in the spring of its second year and it never recovered. I had high hopes for it this year, and it came up but didn’t blossom – I think the emotional scars are still there. Or the ornamental shrub that I put in, forgetting that it would grow larger. The cute little scrub pine I put in to cover the gas lines in back into the house is now more than two stories tall. It looks great from the second story window, and of course the gas lines are again in full view.
The Great Critter Confrontation started several years ago, when a neighbor started feeding baby gophers “because they’re so cute.” Cute my butt cheeks. They’re a menace to all of nature. OK, not all of nature – apparently the foxes find them tasty. They’re like spray painters in an underpass. They destroyed zinnias, several large containers, in fact anything with blossoms. The neighbor’s cat discouraged them in her yard, so they moved comfortably over to mine. Next came a plump woodchuck (that’s a groundhog to non-New Englanders), who feasted on my false sunflowers and peonies before moving on to the coreopsis. I’d go out in the morning to find something missing – a garden bald spot that had opened up since yesterday. There they were, gone! Just chewed off little nubbins of healthy plants. And now the bunnies have arrived. They’re sneaky – they chewed some of the leaves off the asters, so all that’s left are stalks. One day last week, I looked out the kitchen window to see a bunny staring at me as it sat munching on ground phlox. Do you believe that? Unabashedly, unrepentantly eating my plants. You could even see where it had pulled up the roots. I had to go out and push the sobbing plants back into the ground. On another occasion a few weeks back, I was watering the gardens when a bunny came dashing up, not expecting me. It sat on the step for moment looking at me like. “what are you doing here? This is my run.” It ran around the garage to the back and again gave me a look of “you still here?” Oh, they think if they leave enough behind that I won’t notice their handiwork. I know how their little bunny minds work. But I’m on to them, and no more Mr. Nice Gardener. (I’m not totally heartless, but I can sympathize with Mr. McGregor.) I do have these face-to-face interactions with animals. Don’t know what it is – must be my personal charm. Had a brief conversation with a field mouse that had built a nest in the grill. When I removed it, he sat briefly on the side shelf and gave me a look of utter despair, rather like “do you have any idea how long it took me to build that? I don’t even have fire insurance.”
You’d think that something so intimately connected to the natural world would be trouble-free and with continual upward movement. Nay, nay. Gardening is like the Hundred Years War – it seesaws back and forth, each of us at some point claiming victory. There are side skirmishes with the chipmunks and squirrels, who feast on spring bulbs. One chipmunk, answering to the name Herman, even came up onto my back deck and dug his way into a couple of containers. Herman and a couple of buddies (or consorts) have been digging tunnels and uprooting bulbs at a prodigious rate for some time now. I’m convinced he’s networking with the squirrels. “You guys dig up the big bulbs. We’ll handle the little ones and the geranium pots.” He got his just reward though, when he built his nest in a drain spout and that didn’t work out well in the next downpour. In another slight victory, I seem to have defeated the slugs that quite enjoyed the hostas and other leafy plants. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve seen intricate Swiss cheese holes in the leaves, and similarly, I haven’t seen any beetles on the roses either. I guess those sprays and dusting powders really work. Another triumph of chemicals over nature.
I’m now waiting for the hummingbirds to reappear. Typically, I see two or three around some of the more colorful plants and the feeder I put out. I faithfully clean out and refill the feeder every week or two, and the bee balm is in full flower, so they should be coming by any time now. Birds come in, take what they need, and not wreck havoc throughout the gardens. Years ago, though, I was watering some hanging plants on the front porch – it was early in my gardening career. A bird flew out and scared the . . . . out of me. Swallows had built a nest in a hospitable hanger of geraniums. Until the baby birds flew off into oblivion, those geraniums were totally on their own.
The great gardening adventure goes on with morning watering routines, clipping and deadheading, trips to the nursery, and planning new projects. I’ll teach those bunnies to stay away from my . . . . . .ok, I’m thinking, . . . . . .no.
I'm Thinking...No! 