End of May

May thirty-oneth - the end of May, the beginning of summer, and very appropriately today was a hot, dry summer day. All of the gardens, all of the new plants, need water.  The last two "rain events" have defied the weather reports, beat the odds (rain 80-90% likely) and not a drop fell even though heavy clouds surrounded the area and thunder was quite close. TPP hates to start watering so early in the season, but what you gonna do?  When you plant, you water, or you buy again, and plant again. Yesterday evening  Mrs. Phactor sprinted out of the back door and out to her perennial garden to chase a woodchuck out and save her bell flowers. Apparently Campanula is like candy, and although the bunnies have been awful, her bellflowers were not converted into bun-bun salad and a decent flowering was anticipated. A newly arrived resident, a woodchuck, would change all of that.  It took three tries, and most of an apple as bait, but the woodchuck relocation was successful within 12 hrs of its initiation; the bellflower will flower. Mrs. Phactor spent the day relocating hosta and removing weeds. Right now a Calycanthus-Sinocalycanthus hybrid, an American snowbell, wild columbine, pentstemons, yellow indigos, and Mrs. Phactor's iris areekeeping the gardens colorful. And indeed, the view was enjoyed most fully with a couple of margaritas. Isn't that what gardens are for?

A minor garden triumph over wildlife

The biggest problem with having a wildlife friendly property is that it is wild life friendly.  Sometime this spring a member of our native species of marmot, locally called a woodchuck (as in "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.")  These are nice attractive animals, quite like a large, voracious guinea pig.  So far this season, our lettuce and broccoli has been eaten to nubs three times.  Fortunately spinach is not in the woodchuck play list.  Parsley, cilantro, and especially bellflowers are favorites, and this fellow would pass through Mrs. Phactor's perennial garden like it was a cafeteria.  Ah, but that ended yesterday when the lure of a nice big chunk of apple (one of the best uses of red delicious taken out of storage). This was a very well-fed healthy young fellow of interdeterminate sex, and they were relocated to a woodchuck preserve maintained by our local municipality.  However, as the season is deep into May, our chances of getting very much more in the way of lettuce or broccoli are limited until fall.  Now if only something could be done to reduce the populations of squirrels and rabbits.  Part of the problem is that the local idiots go crazy everything they see a red fox, call the city, and their animal control people remove them from the area (usually permanently).  Here foxy, foxy, foxy!  Nice juicy bunnies!  This is how to stay friendly to wild life. 

Likes and dislikes save spinach

Everyone has likes and dislikes, and in this particular case, fortunately, woodchucks do not like spinach.  So while the Phactor's lettuce and broccoli have been "set back" for a second time, inspite of extensive fencing, the spinach was avoided because spinach, probably the oxalic acid, is on the woodchuck dislike list. In the spirit of if fate gives you lemons make lemonaide, the spinach has been avoided, so tonight we enjoyed a wilted spinach salad, made with remarkably tender greens, although who knows when we'll have any broccoli.  By the way, should you ever need to live trap a woodchuck, the Phactor would suggest that the bait that will get a woodchuck to walk into a trap is a slice of muskmelon.  They love  muskmelon, but don't like spinach.