Round Up The Usual Suspects

We suspect the varmint that left the teeth marks on the Butternut Squash the other day was probably either a California Ground Squirrel (Spermophilus beecheyi) or some sort of canyon rat.  If it had been a raccoon or a possum, the whole squash would probably have been gone.  If it had been birds, there would have been signs of pecking, but these were pretty healthy chomps by teeth.

There are several types of rats that hang out in the canyon behind us; we know for sure that there are members of the Neotoma species, also known as Wood Rats, Pack Rats or Trade Rats, but we've just been calling them Pack Rats.  We know they're here because we've found two middens in the area.  One midden is on the other side of the driveway wall; the second was destroyed when Greg cleared the brush out from behind the fence.  

Pack rats construct their middens out of whatever material is available, including sticks, twigs, leaves, rocks or whatever.  I left a paintbrush on the driveway wall several years ago and found later that it had been incorporated into the wall of the Pack Rat midden a few feet away.  

About a year ago Cindy left the lid of the compost bin ajar.  When she went to add something to the compost heap, she discovered a Pack Rat staring back up at her; it had evidently climbed or fallen in trying to get at the vegetation in the bin and couldn't get out.  We started calling it "Mickey" on account of its huge round ears.  Anyway, we opened the bottom door of the bin and left the area, and Mickey evidently took to his heels because he was nowhere to be seen when we came back.  

According to the San Diego Natural History Museum, Pack Rats don't need to drink water, but "require quantities of succulent vegetation ... for moisture".  Yup, "succulent vegetation" describes our beautiful Butternut Squash, so Mickey and his cousins are suspects along with the Ground Squirrels.  

Once the anti-varmint panels are finished, they'll all have to go somewhere else for their "succulent vegetation."  Maybe they could try eating some of the humongous jade plants out in the canyon.

Shock! Horror!

Butternut Squash

Varmint toothmarks on the Butternut Squash!  Oh, the horror!

Cindy is very rightly totally pissed off about this.

She has been diligently constructing the varmint repelling shields for the two new raised beds behind the garage, but it's slow going because the beds are an irregular shape and the support posts are inside the beds instead of on the outside as they were on the original raised bed.

That means that each panel has to be custom tailored to fit each individual space for it all to fit together properly, and all the careful measuring and cutting takes time.

Meanwhile, the two Butternut Squash that had set on were growing, and growing, and growing.  Cindy had completed all but three of the panels around the squash bed, when the varmints struck at night.  She found the teeth marks yesterday morning.

It's so disgusting because the squash were coming along so nicely, and the critters got both of them.

The only good thing is the fact that once the panels are finished, they will be useful for many years to come, although that's not much consolation for losing these squash.

Now we need to finish the enclosure to protect the pumpkin bed.

Recycle, Reuse, Renew

We've always believed in reusing or repurposing useful items, or even items that don't initially seem to have any further use.

Several years ago Cindy decided she wanted to try her hand at an upholstery project; she has been an accomplished seamstress most of her life, but had never done upholstery, so she thought that might be fun.

One of the chairs in the living room had become the target of choice for Grady, one of our more neurotic cats.  I had inherited Grady from my computer guy years before; he was a beautiful, steel gray cat, but an emotional mess.  He had the unpleasant habit of wetting in unauthorized locations whenever the spirit moved him to do so, and we often didn't discover the spot until much later.  Further, once he had started on a location, he often went back to it again and again.

So you can probably guess exactly why we needed to reupholster the chair.

After Cindy stripped off the old cloth and foam padding, it seemed like a much bigger job than she had originally anticipated, so the frame of the chair sat in the garage for several years.  We finally decided to just get rid of it and put it out on the street during a neighborhood-wide yard sale, but nobody took it.

But looking at the frame from a different angle gave Cindy the idea to make a succulent garden or plant stand out of it, so we carted it back into the garage.  I painted it the same color as the trim on our house, and we finally carried it out to the new garden area behind the fence, reusing the top of our old patio table as a base for the new succulent stand.

Surrounded by the blue Plumbago and a few sprigs of the orange Trumpet Creeper vine, it's going to look spectacular.

The Bean Poles Are Up

Bean Teepee

The bean poles, or teepee, or structure of whatever you want to call them, are up in the raised beds behind the garage, and the beans have been planted.  They're all under their protective square cages until we can get the new anti-varmint shields finished.

Cindy has been in a hurry to get them planted, but couldn't do it until the irrigation issues were resolved, and now that they are planted, we have to finish the protective screens so that the squirrels don't nibble the sprouts off before they get started.  Considering the damage the squirrels have already inflicted on the pumpkin and the butternut squash plants, that could be considerable damage.

The pumpkin has started putting out flowers and the leaves are huge, but nothing has set on yet.

Guardian Of The Pumpkins At Work

Cindy stationed one of her garden art pieces, a ferocious looking blue bird, to guard the pumpkins, and he's hard at work.

Butternut Squash Trellis

The Butternut Squash plant is already happily climbing up its trellis and a couple of small squash have already set on.  So, as long as the squirrels don't eat them before we can get the screens completed, we should have some squash this fall.

Chow Down, Lady Bug!

Aphids For Dinner!

The Asclepia in our butterfly garden have set seed pods full of milkweed, and the pods have attracted more than butterflies--they've also attracted a horde of bright yellow aphids.

We've been reluctant to use the Bug Blaster to blast them off because that would probably also wipe out any Monarch butterfly eggs or small caterpillars on the leaves, too.

So we were delighted to see a few Ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata) eating the aphids.  In a few days this one Ladybug had cleaned almost all the yellow aphids off this milkweed pod.  It's amazing how voracious an appetite these bugs have, but there are plenty more of the aphids to keep her and the others satiated.

And as far as we're concerned, she's welcome to all the aphids she and the others can eat.  Go Ladybugs!

Leek Flower

Leek Flower

 The leek flower continues to delight us.  It's even bigger now than it was when it first emerged from the pod.

Each of the tiny purple and white buds has a delicate pink stem leading down into the heart of the flower.

Neither of us had ever seen a leek flower before, so we just decided to let it go and see what happened, but we had no idea it would be so entertaining to watch it unfold.

Sex In The Garden

Female Zucchini Flower

O.K., I know what you're thinking, but it's the Clarimore Zucchini and the Persian Cucumbers.

Cindy noticed the other day that the honey bees all seemed to have congregated on the lavenders in the butterfly garden in the front yard, while the zucchini and cucumber blossoms in the vegetable beds in the back were untouched.  Since the blossoms only last a short time, it's essential that pollen be transferred from the male blossoms to the female ones.  If the bees don't get it done, somebody else (that would be us) has to make sure it happens, so she raided my paintbrush collection and got the pollen transferred.

Male Zucchini Flower

Of course, I had to ask, "how can you tell which is which?"  And, of course, it boils down to the long, narrow stamen of the male and the round pistil of the female blossom.

I guess, after all these years of reading the bawdy bits of Shakespeare's plays, I should have expected it would be something like that.

If the number of blossoms is any gauge, we should have a bumper crop of zucchini again this year.  It's a good thing we like them so much.  Cindy should be able to try another zucchini cream pie.  Yum!

Small White or Cabbage Moth?

We've been seeing a lot of the little white butterflies the back yard recently; so far they seem to prefer the catnip, which is now blossoming all over the place, but Cindy wants to keep them from laying eggs on the tomato plants.

We had always called these butterflies Cabbage Moths, but now it appears they are really called Cabbage Whites, or even Small Whites, since they really are butterflies, not moths.

Cindy's keeping a vigilant eye on them, whatever you call them; we're trying to encourage all the butterflies to go to the butterfly garden in the front yard, instead of the vegetable garden in the back.  Their caterpillars are welcome to chew up all the Asclepia and Buddleia they want, but stay off the veggies.

Paper Wasp

Paper Wasp Nest

We've been watching a nest of Paper Wasps forming on the roof of our patio cover.  There always seem to be some of the wasps on the nest.  They apparently create the paper to form the nest by chewing wood and plant material and there's plenty of that available in our yard, particularly with the straw we just spread around the various beds.  We're hoping they'll eat the straw to form the paper for the nest rather than the growing plants.

We'll probably just leave the nest alone.  We've watched them from a cautious distance, but the wasps don't seem to be interested in us and they do eat caterpillars, flies and beetle larvae, to which they are more than welcome.  They'll be particularly welcome if they pick any Hornworms off the tomatoes.

Squirrel Wars--Episode 3,255

Cindy called downstairs to me the other day and said, "That squirrel is eating my pumpkin plant!  Go chase him off!"

Pumpkin Leaves AKA Squirrel Salad

So I ran out to the beds behind the garage, waving my arms up over my head, yelling "RAAAAAH!  RAAAH!   RAAAAH!", chasing the squirrel as he scampered all the way out to the telephone pole on the edge of the canyon.  He probably thought I was crazy, but it did scare him off, at least temporarily.

More Salad

Then I went to inspect the damage and discovered that he had indeed chewed every bit of pumpkin leaf he could reach through the chicken wire cage Cindy had created for the pumpkin plant.  The leaves are now about the size of dinner plates; the one leaf was pretty well chewed up along the edge that touched the chicken wire, so it's obvious that the squirrel has been helping himself to a salad for a while.

Cindy had hoped to be able to wait a while longer before constructing some of the more sophisticated varmint enclosures for the two beds behind the garage, but at the rate the pumpkin is growing, it looks like it's going to have to be sooner rather than later.  The smaller openings of the hardware cloth she uses for the bottom half of the enclosures should thwart the squirrel, while the plexiglass top half keeps them from climbing into the beds.

This "Family Tree" cartoon by Signe Wilkinson just about says it all (click on the link to see the cartoon).