Christmas eve

 Happy holidays everyone!  Having just celebrated the winter solstice, and recognizing that most of the images and trappings of Christmas are of pagan origin, TPP has no particular religious connections with Christmas, but most of my childhood memories were born of the American Christmas traditions, so all the decorating done by Mrs. Phactor make me quite happy.  The weather here in the upper Midwest has turned quite cold for a couple of days after highs in the upper 30s and 40s.  Late season garden work included picking up lots of small limbs from several windy days and fencing several garden areas where otherwise the bunnies would damage many smaller trees and lots of shrubs.  Later in the season and the stakes for the fencing wouldn't push into the frozen ground.  

The interesting transition taking place is the invasion of chipmunks (now in hibernation) and gray squirrels, where formerly it was only fox squirrels, a bigger, but slower species.  In an area near us and often including our garden, a melanistic black form of the gray squirrel has also appeared.  No idea why these darker coats might be of some advantage, if they are; the black coats seem quite obvious to our eyes.  But the grays are becoming more numerous.

The longer nights help promote flowering in house plants that have been in the garden until well into October.  First the "Christmas cacti" and an Aeschynanthus flowered.  Then the Queen's tears flowered (see the last FFF blog) and the Christmas azalea, which looks much better having been cut back to promote some denser growth.  Now a large Hatiora salicornoides cactus.  All the orchids are putting up new flowering stalks.  So it seems a bit silly to sprout paper-white narcissuses, but the bulbs were a gift, and they do smell great. And all of these plants are in the same room with the Christmas tree, a Frasier fir.  We are taking a number of precautions in order to have the F1 over for Christmas, along with a refugee from Australia who remained rather than travel back to down under.

  

Kindness to squirrels and falling gourds

In an act of kindness, Mrs. Phactor was upcycling decorative gourds, but cracking them and then leaving them under the big sugar maple just beyond the patio, long a feeding station for local wild life.  Now you must watch out because every now and again a gourd drops down out of the sugar maple, generally, botanically, an unexpected event.  Spent a couple of hours yesterday relocating fencing to keep rabbits away from young trees and shrubs.  They get shifted to more tender shoots in the spring and summer.  Weather is predicted to turn drastically colder soon, so finishing up garden work was necessary. Everything is pretty well put to bed for the winter now.

Tree rat predators in evidence

Presently a fluffy-tailed tree rat sometimes called a squirrel is sitting about 4' from me cleaning out a small bird feeder affixed to the kitchen window.  The feeder was purchased to amuse the kitty-girls, but the tree rats found it before the birds.  No matter one of the kitty-girls is amused greatly by being nose to nose.  Another tree-rat is cleaning up some field corn kernels under a nearby tree.  Both of them bear superficial injuries with a distinctly talon-like pattern.  The scars on one have healed leaving some longish scars with whitish fur running nearly perpendicular to the back bone.  The nearest one has some fairly deep gouges, healing but still pretty raw looking. Both are evidence of near misses by the neighborhood's resident to predator, red-tailed hawks.  Generally these are country birds, but a pair has been nesting atop stadium lights of a nearby baseball field. At least one offspring has been seen, so perhaps these hawks are becoming a bit more urban adapted. A pest control guy reported that the density of small mammals was several times greater in the city than in the country, which is a maize and soybean desert, so prey may be plentiful. If two of our dozen resident tree-rats bear evidence of predation, TPP wonders how many are missing.  Unfortunately we have no apparent shortage so far.  Here birdy, birdy, nice juicy well-fed tree rats.
Every now and then a Cooper's hawk, usually a juvenile, has been seen having a go at tree-rats or young bunnies, but even though fairly common in our immediate area, they are song bird specialists adept at making cardinals disappear in a poof of feathers using a power dive from the crown of an oak.

Fat Bushy-tailed Tree Rats

These are not our favorite animals as their functions in life seem to be 1. eat everything, 2. chew on everything, 3. dig up everything, and mostly in that order. This is the largest squirrel native to N. America, the so-called fox squirrel, and everyone but gardeners think them cute and handsome. Our estate is home to a dozen or so individuals at any given point in time. Often anywhere from 8 to 18 can be seen here and there around the gardens. If you have any that are fatter than these you'll have to prove it because it may not be possible. These are midwestern corn and squash seed, along with sunflower seed fattened squirrels. This particular fellow is disposing of stale, ancient raisins, so they do have some trivial uses as food disposals. If times ever get too tough squirrel stew will be on the menu. One of our residents this year has 3 or 4 prominent whitish scars that look as though they were caused by talons, a close call with a red-tailed hawk perhaps. The worst thing they do is chew the bark from tree limbs to get at the inner bark, and many of the limbs that fall show evidence of such limb-damaging or limb-killing girdling activity. Even worse than the bun-buns, the bark gnawing takes place way up in the canopy, so no caging will help. And they are not fast learners; they'll eat a magnolia flower bud, find it distasteful and move to the next as if the outcome might be different, and one year they chewed all but one flower bud on a big-leaf magnolia, and about then you begin thinking about squirrel stew again. They do provide diversion, a sort of cat TV entertainment for the kitty-girls. We had a big, big cat who seemed to delight in treeing squirrels and then hanging around to listen to their shrill scolding. Does your wildlife need to be diversified?  Let us know.

Squirrel olympic training

The primary training season for the squirrel olympics is underway. The primaryevent is always the same: get into the bird feeder and hog down all bird seed. So far this year the event has mainly involved the long jump and who knows how far the squirrels can be pushed to go. But that's part of the training, to push the athletes to ever higher and longer distances. The event used to involve a lot of pole climbing, but the advent and application of fairly effective baffles has pretty much ended things. Yes, the young ones try it a time or two, and that's it. A change in the garden configuration resulted in a repositioning of a bird feeder on a pole to a position that was further than ever from a large sugar maple tree. It seemed a safe bet because no squirrel had ever jumped that far before. But that was before this year! Please understand that these are fox squirrels, big, husky, handsome, and well-fed. Our gardens are prime fox squirrel habitat and that's why some 12 to 18 of them live here abouts. At any given time you can see 8-10. Well, an olympic aspirant found out that you could jump from higher up in the maple tree and land on the feeder. Others soon copied the example. A cage around the feeder did not deter the squirrels either, finding their way in withint 2 hrs of its construction. So during the weekend's break in the cold weather the bird feeder was moved another 3 feet from the maple tree. Several squirrels were seen sizing up the distance yesterday, but no one was attempting the new jump. But this morning, a squirrel was sitting in the feeder having his breakfast. No official were present so the distance of the jump could not be verified, and as certain as possible without making them all wear numbered shirts, only one squirrel has thus far qualified for the long jump. The training will continue. 

Rodents break probation - herbivore enforcement returns

For purposes of last week's garden tours, our most obtrusive plant cages were removed and hidden away.  The less obtrusive cages remained in place.  All the activity, the patio construction and the hundreds of visitors annoyed the resident woodchuck enough that they moved to green pastures.  The bun-buns and tree rats just stayed out of sight.  But presently the Phactors are feeling rather gullible because just because the tree rats and bun-buns didn't chew anything up for a few days, you right away fall into a complacency that is remarkably stupid.  Of course at times it matters not.  The dill remained fenced to protect all the seedlings, but they are gone, victims of a very small hungry bun-bun, one small enough to fit through the fence openings.  Next year we are upgrading our defensive perimeter with a critter border fence (did you get that NSA?) that has much smaller openings.  Among the bed of bellflowers the woodchuck neatly cropped, a new species (name somewhere in the records) re-appeared much to our surprise having narrowly survived a not only herbivory but a reduction in the bed size.  So now the exclusion cages are being repositioned.  It still raises a question about why a tropical bonsai bougainvillea was so attractive?  Perhaps a tree-rat keeps a life list of bark chewed off limbs.  Still our list of bun-bun favorites is showing its accuracy.  So the probationary period is over.  The rodents broke probation as we cynically knew they would, so it's back to caged plants as usual.  Things were going so well there for a few days.  Sigh.

Squirrel recipes?

The local free-loading, well-fattened fox squirrels, while quite handsome, gather in our "wildlife friendly" gardens in great numbers during the winter season because the Phactors provide an excellent free lunch.  Where upon they literally trample gardens with their tiny little paws, and then they chew on tree branches and break small trees and shrubs.  Without any particular data the population density of maybe 5 to 6 squirrels per acre would seen adequate to be "friendly".  Since some 18 squirrels are presently hanging around, literally a herd of them, a bit of wildlife control might be in order.  At least one of the kitty girls is eager to assist, but her youthful enthusiasm must be balanced against her relative inexperience at killing anything more dangerous than catnip stuffed furry toys, which she does viciously.  Mrs. Phactor is not all together keen on squirrel culling so perhaps a wonderful new recipe might tip the balance, so your favorite squirrel recipes would be appreciated. 

Two filberts

What a terrible crop!  Two filberts!  That's one-fourth of the crop harvested the year before.  American filbert is a much under appreciated and little planted shrub, and this should be corrected.  Two full grown filbert shrubs that top out a 8-10' tall occupy a space along a boundary fence in the space between our garage and a garden shed, a distance of some 15-20'.  They are a nearly trouble free privacy barrier with a handsome habit, and they grow well in the shade.  The pollen catkins are present for next season's early spring flowering.  Most people don't notice the female flowers at all.  All you see are the little red feathery stigmas of 2-4 flowers emerging from the bud scales.  The nuts are smaller than the cultivated filberts, but every bit as tasty. Unfortunately the squirrels like to jump the gun and they get eaten just before actual maturity.  Our harvest consists of the few nuts they miss.  Nonetheless the shrub is very worth planting. 

Squirrel appreciation day - you must be joking

According to an authoritative source today, or yesterday, is Squirrel appreciation day. As this is being written about a half dozen well-fed fox squirrels are hanging, literally, around our bird feeders and this is after accepting corn and squash seeds as bribes to not do so. They are indeed handsome animals, and so the Phactor wishes to express his appreciation. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't gnaw the bark off tree limbs and the trunks of Japanese maples and bonsai trees. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't dig up bulbs and newly planted garden beds. Squirrels are appreciated when they don't eat your strawberries, all your strawberries, or your not yet mature squash. Squirrels are appreciated by our black and white "death to all squirrels" (in theory only, but her effort is appreciated) feline. Squirrels are truly appreciated by the purveyors of the hundreds of feet of fencing and stakes used to improve our squirrel appreciation. So the next time a hawk or fox dismembered squirrel carcass, or a squirrel pancake is in the road, it shall be very much appreciated, and not just today, but every day.