Wordless Wednesday
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Creatures of the dark
Meet my little friend – isn’t he cute?Right, uh huh …
It seems that this little creature – or one just like him, and I are destined to meet.
I tend to water in the evenings. Yes I know that isn’t always the best thing for garden plants but I really have had few problems develop by doing so. I water in the evening because I live next to two older ladies, uh, elderly ladies and they each come outside and water twice a day.
One in particular tends to follow me around, or worse she waits until I’m as far away from her as I can possibly be, and then she asks me a question or comments on the weather or some such thing.
“Huh, what? I can’t hear you?”
So I stop what I’m doing and walk over to where she is – usually on her porch – and get her to repeat whatever she had said. After a short conversation I try to get back to work, only to be interrupted several times. What should be a half hour job turns into a two hour job because of these ladies and other adjoining neighbors.
Having explained the background, hopefully you can see why I’ve taken to watering in the late evening, and even after dark?
My garden is small, but it’s full of plants, and as a result it can take more than two hours to water it adequately if I only water every second or third day. Most of the plants are in the backyard, therefore most of my time is spent in the back, in the semi-dark, and with the possibility of meeting up with Mr. and or Mrs. Raccoon. Oh and their kids too!
And that is what has been happening lately!
We have a raccoon that seems to think that the backyard is his or hers. It hangs out on the fence between our house and our other neighbors and watches me in the yard. I’m not all that happy with this situation. It’s not always there … sometimes it shows up after I’ve been watering for a while, like last night.
I heard scritch scritch scritch and looked over, and there on top of my neighbors covered patio was the raccoon. He or she was just about to climb onto my fence, and from there who knows where it would have gone. I turned quickly, hose in hand and dialed the nozzle to Jet and sent a stream flying at him! You should have seen him run!
Victory was mine! I felt like one of Charlies Angels with that move. My trusty water hose and nozzle saved the day.
Naturally after that adrenaline rush I was nervous. So much for my victory. It might come back!
So what did I do? No I didn’t stop watering. My garden was thirsty, but I do have to say, it probably didn’t get as much as it would have had the raccoon not made my heart pitter patter. I stood in my yard near the patio, not too far from the porch and safety inside the enclosed back room, and watered from there. I put the hose on a strong but wide stream and hit all the plants in the back corners and back borders. The plants closer to me got a little more accurate watering.
So how do I get the raccoons to stop hanging out in my yard? It’s not like there’s any garbage that they can get into in the back. They dig in a few of my plants now and then but otherwise don’t really cause any damage. Not so bad really … it’s just that I like being outdoors around the same time that they seem to come out and I don’t like meeting them face to face.
They’ve never been around this much. Before they used to just walk through our yard and move onto one of our neighbors yards – used ours like a freeway I guess. But I’ve been sick this year and haven’t been out as much – especially after dark, so I think this has given them a chance to stop and look around and say “Hey, this is a nice place to hang out”.
What’s your thoughts on raccoons hanging out in the backyard? Should I just stop going out there after dark and let them win? Unfortunately, that would mean braving my neighbors attention and everything taking two or three times longer than it should take to get done. Nope … I gotta figure out a way to scare the pesky raccoons away, because my neighbors are worse! Help!
War of the Roses
It figures.
I finally manage to get out into the garden this weekend and of course it’s during a heat-wave. Needless to say I didn’t go out into the garden until late afternoon or early evening as I was waiting for it to cool down a bit.
Still, I made some progress!
The wind was blowing quite hard on Friday afternoon – probably bringing in all the hot weather that’s settled in this area. I noticed that my climbing rose- Antique89 was tipping over in the wind and was crashing into my patio table.
The rose is approximately 7 feet tall and has very thick canes. It was leaning over at more than a 45 degree angle. I quickly grabbed some stakes and my garden tie (plastic ribbon) and scissors and ran outside to fix the rose.
While I was wrestling with the rose our boarder apparently came outside looking for me. She didn’t find me. I was under the rose! Hello! Roses don’t normally scream. That was me that was moaning and groaning as the thick thorns dug into the skin on my hands, arms and even my legs.I’d say that Antique 89 and Baron Prevost are probably the thorniest roses that I have in my garden. I’ll be working with all of my roses over the next few days and I’ll let you know if I find any other ones that fit in that category.
Unfortunately, since I haven’t been in my garden all that much over the last two months I have a lot of work to do and a lot of rose wrestling to do. I know, I know … this is the time of year that a gardener should be in the garden regularly, but I’ve been sick and just haven’t been able to get out there.
Much to my dismay and joy as well, the rose are growing as if they are on steroids. Must be all that alfalfa tea I put on them last year. They are huge! Since they are so large they are beginning to flop all over the place too.
Last winter as we prepared the garden for it’s cool slumber my husband thought he was doing me a favor by removing most of the stakes I had in the garden supporting many of my somewhat floppy roses. He did me no favors – especially now, since I’ve let the garden become somewhat overgrown. I’m going to have to climb right into the flowerbed and try to untangle rose branches and discover perennials that are hiding below them.
I’m proud to say that one half of the backyard garden has been tamed! The roses have been straightened, and the plants below them can now be seen. Half the beds have nice red cedar mulch on them. It’s starting to look pretty nice back there. I hope to get the other half of the backyard and the front garden done within the next two days. I still haven’t planted all those annuals though. I thought that I’d better tame the garden first so that I can actually see what areas are a little bare and need annuals. The rest will go into my planters.
I’m going to get my husband to take a picture of my arms tomorrow and if he does I’ll post it. I must have about 50 scratches on each arm – pretty much from the elbows down. They are burning and they look terrible.