news from the garden

First the good news. The lettuce seeds are sprouting!
















And now the SUPER-DUPER news. A friend of one of the housemates brought us this gnome for our garden. He is beautiful and will guard our plants. Thank you very much excellent friend. A garden is not really a garden until it has a gnome.

The bad news is that someone dug up the cucumbers. The gnome-bearing friend told us how to make little fortresses to protect the plants. Not only a great gift but helpful advice ... an amazing friend indeed.

I retrieved these fortress materials out of the recycling bin. I confess - the ice cream container was mine and the salad container was not! I got the Kawartha Dairy Moose Track ice cream for my dad when he and my mum came for lunch. He did not eat any - it was the lunch with the walnut cake (the ice cream was backup in case the cake fell flat). I then meant to take the Moose Track - and the Raspberry Ripple I got for my mum - to their house. The Raspberry Ripple made it but the Moose Track did not. Sorry Dad.

The combination of guardian gnome and reused-container towers seems to be working.











I know that some people, once they start gardening, start categorizing animals. Suddenly there are good animals and bad animals.

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I hope I do not start to change the way I feel about animals because of my garden.

I used to live in an apartment with a balcony and the squirrels would dig up my flower boxes. They would bury things in amongst the herbs. Why, with acres of yards and parks all around, they had to choose my teeny tiny flower box I am not sure. But so it goes. Who can explain nature?

One day, I had a firm-but-fair chat with a squirrel representative about the matter. I told her that I would not put any more corn in the special squirrel corn chair if they did not stop wrecking my plants. The squirrel was very attentive and no squirrel ever dug up my herbs and flowers again.

Nobody believes that story.

I think it happened because one night I freed a squirrel from one of those "humane" traps at my parents' place. Never, never tell them! I was sleeping over and I could hear the scared little squirrel rattling around in the cage. The trap had been set because the squirrels were living in my parents' walls and the parents were trying to get the squirrels to move out - they eventually had more luck with the squirrels than with us :) I went down and used a broom handle to release the trap door. The squirrel scampered up onto the fence, looked at me for a long time and then ran off. And now the squirrels know I am their friend. I am the Scarlet Pimpernel of squirrels. I am the Mysterious Barky Steel.

Nobody believes that either.

And if you ask my parents about humane traps, they harumph dismissively, "Oh those things never work."

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Notes:

My special corn chair had a table like this. My Uncle Walter's friend made it. You can get them here. I wish I still had mine. When my friend Peter saw a squirrel dining at the Corn Café, he exclaimed, "They really are nature's little wonders, aren't they?" Now he owns a house with a garden and he throws rocks at the squirrels who try to frolic there. I know why. The squirrels play havoc with his plants. But he is not the Mysterious Barky Steel!

*A little internet joke: apparently You Tube is having a nervous breakdown about this guy called Alex Jones and is tagging videos that talk about him as invalid arguments.