Lone Survivor?

One Survivor?

Well, it appears that at least one California Ground Squirrel escaped the attack of the Gopher Snake on the nest.

We had been wondering why we hadn't seen any squirrels this Spring; we saw Big Mama out under the feeder in February, which usually means she's raising another brood, but since then we had not seen any of them until we saw this one under the bird feeder.  We thought that the snake had wiped them all out, but it looks like at least one escaped.

These varmints are so prolific that even if a nest is wiped out, others soon move into the vacant burrow and set up housekeeping.  And soon they're all over the place again, eating everything they can reach.

This one looks pretty young, but at least he now knows where the free birdseed buffet is to be found.

Just stay away from the tomatoes and the blueberries.

Tomato Surprise

Hidden Tomato Plant

So, after tenderly hand raising her tomato plants under grow lights in her office, carefully watering the seedlings with purified water, hand carrying them outside for a few hours each day, and then helping her dad get his tomatoes started in Indiana, Cindy returned to her garden here in San Diego a few weeks ago and found a surprise waiting for her in her rose bed:  a thriving volunteer tomato plant nestled in among the roses.

We have no idea what variety tomato it is or how it got into the rose bed in the front yard, when the "official" tomatoes are in the veggie garden in the back yard, but it seems to be thriving on neglect.

Don't need no fancy grow lights, no premium fertilizer, no careful "hardening off" to adapt to living outdoors, no sir.  Just spring up where ever and start growing.

And now it's already got a tomato forming on one of the branches.

A stealth tomato, what a surprise.

Cindy Tomatoseed

Lou's Seeds Sprouting

Cindy grew up in Indiana, an area of the country that celebrates its connection to the legendary Johnny Appleseed, who popularized the spread of apple trees throughout the mid-West.

Maybe she's been influenced by that example; she seems determined to do the same with heirloom tomato varieties, sprouting the seeds and then giving the extra plants to friends and neighbors.

She also gave her dad some of the seeds.  He had set them up in his laundry room and sprouted them, but Cindy helped him set up a grow light system to give them an extra boost.

By the time we returned from our week long road trip to the wedding in North Carolina, the seedlings had grown a lot.  They were on a capillary mat to insure they had enough water, and they did just fine.

He  planted them outside before another recent trip and now is worried that cooler nights might have set them back a bit, but it has warmed up since and they should be fine.

Cindy Tomatoseed

Tarantula Hawk

We were eating lunch out on the patio today when Cindy said, "What is THAT?"  She had seen a large black bug with red-orange wings on the ground by the wall.

The bug had a shiny black, wasp-like body and was about an inch and half to two inches long, but its most distinctive feature was its flame-colored wings.  It moved too rapidly for me to be able to run in and get my camera, so all we could do was watch while it checked out our shrubbery and then flew off toward the neighbors' yard.

After it flew off I ran inside and started checking the San Diego Museum of Natural History's website and the University of California's Invasive Pest Management (IPM) website, but had no luck finding it.

So I finally gave up and just Googled "black bug with red wings", and found the Tarantula Hawk Wasp, a large wasp that feeds its larvae on Tarantulas and other spiders.  It's apparently pretty widespread in San Diego.

Although the Tarantula Hawk is supposedly not aggressive toward humans, its sting is apparently strong enough to paralyze a huge spider and can be very painful.  That's enough warning for me; if we see another one, we'll leave it alone.

However, that now makes us wonder if it's finding tarantulas in the vicinity of our yard.  Snakes, large hairy spiders, stinging wasps; I'm not even going to wonder what might be next.

Zero to Sixty

Actually, it's more like 60 to 90 degrees.

San Diego basically has three seasons:  Rainy, Fog and Fire.   The rainy season usually starts about November and lasts through April.  We get an average of ten inches of rain during the rainy season, but both last year and this year have produced less than the average amount of rainfall.

Fog Season, called May Gray or June Gloom, brings the marine layer off the coast into play and our skies are, well, gray and the weather stays cool.

Fire Season usually starts in late July or mid-August and lasts until the rains start.  We usually get our hottest weather in September and October.

Not this year, though.

We had about a half inch of rain last week, but this week is starting out very hot; 100 degrees in El Cajon today.  With major wildfires already appearing in other parts of Southern California, and no fog to be seen, it looks like we may have jumped directly into Fire Season.  In May.

That's scary.

Gopher Snake

Yesterday's post about the mysterious lack of California Ground Squirrels this year may be explained by the next door neighbor's sighting of a five foot long snake in her back yard yesterday afternoon.

We didn't see the snake, but I'm guessing it's a California Gopher Snake, Pituophis catenifer annectens.  They range in length from 2.5 to 7 feet in length, but are usually about 4 or 5 feet long.  They eat small mammals, especially pocket gophers, but also eat birds and their eggs, lizards and insects.

The Gopher Snake tends to react defensively when disturbed by hissing, rearing back and striking.  It also makes a buzzing sound by shaking its tail, emulating the sound a rattlesnake makes.  This behavior may make some predators back off and leave the snake alone, but it also results in humans killing Gopher Snakes unnecessarily.  

Far from fearing these snakes, some dedicated gardeners even try to buy them to protect their gardens from the depredations of gophers and ground squirrels.

We're guessing from the recent absence of ground squirrels that the snake has already been in our yard, but it's welcome back anytime.

Baby Bust

Last year about this time we saw a population explosion among the California Ground Squirrels. See "Baby Boom".  Big Mama had produced a litter of at least seven baby squirrels, all as cute as a bug's ear and as voracious as, well, as a litter of ground squirrels.  They camped under our bird feeder and stuffed themselves for weeks on the seed that the finches and sparrows spit out onto the ground.  The baby squirrels must have eaten a couple of pounds of bird seed among them.  Then, at the end of June, they dispersed and we only saw them occasionally.

We saw Big Mama under the bird feeder in February gorging on bird seeds, so we've been watching for this year's crop of baby squirrels, but so far have not seen any squirrels at all.

That makes us wonder:   Did something happen to Big Mama?   Did some predator, such as the Tree Fox or a coyote or the hawk get them all?  Are they just late?  Did they find a better feeder?

Maybe the coyote poop we saw out behind the fence a couple of weeks ago had something to do with it.

The Real Poop

Wild Cucumber Seeds?

Well, there's no delicate way to put this, but Cindy found a large cluster of poop outside our back fence the other day.

Covered with poop were some odd looking nuts; strangely familiar looking nuts.  

In fact, I think these are very much like the Marah macrocarpus seeds we found a couple of years ago that had been secreted in the corner of one of the raised beds.

Rodents and birds like Scrub Jays like to cache the seeds, and it looks like some animal may have found one of the caches and eaten the seeds.  Some rather large animal.

And, since all parts of the plant are supposed to be very bitter and cause numbness, somewhere there is probably a varmint with a very bad tummy ache.