Gardening by Mistake

Damn it!

Twice when I’d gone into the kitchen Thor went to the back door and stood there, waiting calmly to be let out. The first time I ignored him but the second time I thought perhaps I should let him have one last trip before I went to bed. Mindful of the raccoons, I flipped the deck light on and peered around. Nothing. I unlocked the door, loudly, and then paused for a few seconds. That should have warned any critters and given them time to flee, right? Wrong. Even with Fenris the beagle doing his usual frantic “There might be something out there!” call as he left the house, Thor still managed to find and kill an animal. I couldn’t see what it was from the door; they were across the yard and in the shadows. It didn’t sound like a raccoon. I thought perhaps it was a possum. At any rate, it took only an instant before it was dead. It was that fast. I had to locate a flashlight and then trek out there (in shoes this time, thankfully, with snow on the ground) to see. Unfortunately, somebody just lost their cat. I’m sick about it. I have always believed cats should not be allowed to roam free. And this is one reason why. The lifespan of an outdoor cat is hugely less than that of an indoor cat. To me, allowing or encouraging cats to roam free is neglect. It’s also rude (I hate finding my neighbor’s cat scat in my garden) and I’m angry every time I find a bird killed in my yard by a cat. (I know it’s not my dogs because it happens outside their fenced back yard.)

So, tomorrow morning before the kids discover it, I’ll have to go remove the cat. If I knew to whom it belonged, I would tell them but it had no collar. This was all senseless and easily avoided if its people had just kept it inside.

I cannot believe that in spite of taking what I thought were reasonable precautions Thor still managed to find and kill something.  One of my big fears is that someday a skunk will somehow get into the back yard and Thor will find it….

Three freakin’ forty-five this morning I ended up with a major asthma attack because of Fenris, our beagle. He sleeps with our daughter but at 3:45 he head-butted our bedroom door and came trotting on in, disgustingly wide awake and happy. My husband showed him the way out, closed the door most of the way… and then about 1 minute later the dog reappeared. This in not normal behavior for him, so I had to assume he was in desperately in need of a quick visit to the yard.

No sooner did he get one paw on the deck than he started baying, our other dog immediately behind. They cornered a really pissed off raccoon. It wasn’t that long ago that they cornered one and then our big dog, Thor, killed it.  Fenris might have yapped it to death, given the chance.  The only footwear near at hand was a set of flip flops, so at 3:45 in the morning, I went charging into the yard in my flip-flops, armed with nothing more than  a broom. I’m still not sure how I managed it, but I separated the dogs from the raccoon and managed to bodily wrestle the big dog a few feet away. While I was doing that, the beagle tried to take on the raccoon, but that round went to the raccoon. It was at least half the size of our beagle, and spitting mad. After discovering it was a lot more challenging than he expected to take on the raccoon, my beagle retreated. He was probably hoping Thor would finish the job while he yapped him on. By dragging Thor back a few feet the raccoon had the opportunity to skinny up and over the fence. I had to drag our dog Thor across the yard and up the stairs to the deck. Once we got inside I realized I could hardly breathe. Asthma attack. Even using my inhaler, I ended up lying in bed, coughing, for another hour while I imagined over and over the raccoon turning on me when I got so close to break up the fight.

Needless to say, we’ll double-check before letting the dogs out at night again. This is the third time in about as many months. They come for the dog food, usually. It’s in a sealed container but they’ve discovered if they knock it over the lip pops off and dinner is served. The bird feeding station is probably just another enticement.

That’s the current number of 4-inch pots I have winter sown. As usual, I’ve jumped into something new with both feet. About 25 % of those 109 pots are for the front border I finally figured out what I want to do with. It’s 55 or 60 feet long and 4 or 5 feet wide (I’m not slogging through a slushy yard of melted snow to go measure) and that’s going to take a whole lot of plants to fill it up.

Meanwhile, a bunch of seeds I started indoors have germinated and need to be potted up. I’ll be busy this weekend.

For two years I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do with the disaster that is my front border.  Today, I finally got a burst of inspiration. Finally! Every other plan I’ve come up with has left me feeling unsatisfied. Since I never was really taken by an of my plans, I’ve just left the border limping along while I work on the garden itself.  I like the idea I came up with today so much that I’ve sown seeds for the plants already. I don’t think I’ll be changing my mind on this plan.

To that end, earlier today I put out 4 containers of echinacea seeds (about 11o seeds)– on top of the shed. It was the only place I felt was safe from the dogs and kids. Of course, on the shed the containers could tempt squirrels. I hope not.

My rose seeds are starting to germinate in earnest now. It’s always exciting to see them start popping like popcorn. Of course, now I’ll have to pot them up and get them under lights. That’s far less exciting. At the moment the germinated seeds are all coming from two plants. One is a Little Darling and the other is a seedling of Deep Purple. If the seedlings from the DP seedling take after the mom but in different colors, I will be very happy indeed. The DP seedling has dark red blooms– scentless, unfortunately, but not surprisingly– in abundance. At its peak, the plant is smothered by the profusion of blooms. Even if I ended up with more seedlings that look just like it (which is, after all, highly likely given that they are OP), I’d be pretty happy. I’d have red blooms like mad. But the same profusion in another color would be awesome, too. I’m not expecting anything particularly interesting from the Little Darling seedlings, but I could easily end up being pleasantly surprised. I did those mostly because I had a bunch of hips and didn’t want them to go to waste.

One of the great things about gardening is the people involved in it. Pat is one of those wonderful people. He’s a gardener in Minnesota. I’ve never met him in person– just correspondence. He posted a “wanted” for buttonbush seed to a seed exchange forum. I had an extra packet because I accidentally put it in my basket twice (oops), so I was happy to send him some. I had no idea what a wealth of riches Pat was going to bestow on me in return. When he found out I’m starting a pocket prairie this year, he sent me countless seeds from his own prairie. Twenty-four kinds of seeds! Unbelievable. Because of Pat, I think the pocket prairie I planned is going to need a bigger “pocket!” My neighbors may not be pleased– prairies are not exactly tidy things and there’s nothing like it in our neighborhood. They’ll probably wish I’d get out and mow!

Thanks, Pat, for your generosity. I hope to have some beautiful plants to send you photos of someday.

I’d gotten a glimpse of one of these several days ago but not enough of one to determine exactly which native sparrow it was. Saturday I was able to use the camera, so I didn’t have to rely on my memory. It seems there is always some detail the bird identification guides tell me to look for when I look after the bird is gone. So, this time I could refer to my picture and what I have here is an American Tree Sparrow. This is its winter grounds. We’re having the worst cold snap in years right now but I figure since this bird summers in the arctic, it probably isn’t bothered by our weather. We’re actually in the southern extreme of its winter grounds. Who knows: maybe this is balmy for them. I haven’t gotten a count of how many there are but I did see several of them today. At a casual glance, they blend in with the house sparrows. They are, however, quite a bit smaller (more slender) when you look at them side by side.

Well, this was certainly another mistake: I put an entire, huge pumpkin into one of my worm bins. It went into the 18 gallon bin. It went in, and the worms came out. As I said, oops.

After a week or so, things settled down in there and the worms no longer hung out at the top of the bin. No, now they are quite happy with the bin. And so were the fruit flies. Yep, I ended up with fruit flies. Oh, did I!

A thick, smothering layer of newspaper shreds took care of the fruit flies. (Although they did relocate into a nearby bin; that bin now sports a thick layer of shreds, as well, and the fruit flies aren’t looking like an issue any more).

So the worms are happy in the bin with the enormous pumpkin. I won’t have to feed again for a looooong time– and it’s already been 2 months–, esp. now with all the newspaper shreds in there, too. But now I have a problem I’ve never had before: the bottom of my bin is a swamp. And somehow, I’ve got to dry that up. It’s going to take more newspaper shreds than it can hold right now, I think. Well, one thing is clear: I won’t be harvesting this bin for a very, very long time.

Needless to say, the remaining pumpkins I collected after Halloween will not be chucked, complete, into other bins.

Not only are native grasses boring to grow, they are not easy to grow. Aside from my chasmanthium latifolium (northern sea oats) I’m having miserable results.  It is very, very frustrating. It’s going to be hard to have my pocket prairie w/o the grasses! At this point, it looks like I’m going to have almost all forbs. I’m going to have to try winter sowing some and if those germinate, I’ll have to plan on babying those through the summer and then hopefully they’ll have enough size to plant out in the fall. If not, then I suppose I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy some from a nursery. I don’t want to do that if I can help it.

Very frustrating.

The asclepias, on the other hand, are shooting for the moon. It’s ridiculous how tall those seedlings are getting. I have trouble imagining that they won’t bloom this first summer. They are dwarfed only by the rudbeckia of unknown type that are growing next to them. One of these days, those rudbeckia are going to bloom and I’ll find out if they are the Cherry Brandy or something else.  It’s too bad they weren’t of planting out size before the killing freeze. Then I wouldn’t have to be caring for them over the winter. It’s rather silly to be doing so.

In less than 3 1/2 hours, I caught 21 starlings in the DRST. Wow.

I think it’s the bait I’m using: layer hen crumbles. I bought a 50# bag for $10 with the intention of feeding the mourning doves and juncos. It turns out that the starlings go into a frenzy for the stuff. Who knew? I mean, it’s not like they are picky eaters, either!  But I’ve found that sprinkling it around the trap leads to an entire flock of starlings surrounding it. One will discover the bait tray loaded with the crumbles and start eating, stretching and carefully balancing, so as to not go down the elevator. And then boom! Another pushy, hungry starling butts in and shoves the first bird all the way into the elevator.  The elevator resets and the process repeats.

I don’t expect this kind of result once winter passes and the starlings have the option of insects again. But for now, it’s working wonders.  A few more native cavity nesting birds will have a chance, now, once they begin setting up nests this spring because there will be that many fewer starlings around to steal their nests and destroy eggs and kill nestlings.