the little wild kingdom

[flowerbug]

2 miscreants (aka chipmunks) were lured in by the sweet seduction of the dried grape to their dooms... it's not something i really enjoy doing, but we're really getting overrun by chipmunks already and the season is just getting started.

i'm wondering how many i will have to keep trapping before i start to notice a difference and can perhaps take down Stonehenge III (Stonehenge I is the original, Stonehenge II is the one in Washington State that I saw many years ago). Stonehenge III i will have to get a picture of before i take it apart and return the components to where they belong. hopefully sooner rather than later...

 

[flowerbug]

i think i have both the peas and the beans sprouting.

 

[flowerbug]

watered peas and beans first thing and then finished up weeding the onion garden. i need to do something else with it this year - probably will plant beans. after getting that done then i moved on to clearing out a few pathways of some weeds (columbine flowers that grew from seeds in the gravel) and then scraped the daylily garden (trying to remove them - it's about 90% done) and also weeded a few other things until it got to be too hot out there.

over a month before summer and i'm already on summer hours (work in the morning for as long as i can until it gets too hot and then siesta). weather report says it's about 83F out there. pretty humid. some rains went by but missed us.

tomorrow i hope we get the faucet repaired because gardening without a hose is not much fun when you have a lot of gardens and are hauling water a few watering cans at a time. sure it is a good workout but ...

 

[flowerbug]

faucet is replaced. we also had a few good rains yesterday and last night.

the plumber mentioned he liked how we did our front yard (before seeing everything out back) and that his girlfriend was interested in getting a garden going. i said anytime she wanted to visit i'd be fine with that! as he was leaving he asked if he could bring her over sometime and i said that would be fun. i'm always happy to talk gardening and to give advice (even when they don't ask for it!)... i have plenty of experience in doing things the wrong way.

 

[flowerbug]

we have new bucket top chipmunk and mouse trap flippy things. them being so new i don't expect a lot more action until i'm allowed to set them in the places where they'll get more use and also until the stink of the new plastic airs out.

in the meantime raisins on the peanut butter in the rat trap are getting some of the chipmunks. single raisin has got three chipmunks so far. still makes me sad to do it but we're getting overrun again.

we have our starts for the gardens, i hope to get the onions planted today but it might be iffy as i have to weed the area where i'm planting them. wasn't planning on getting started planting until tomorrow or later but Mom said we're going today (which was yesterday) so ... rains in the forecast for tonight so that will be good if i can actually get them planted. also picked up tomatoes and peppers to plant.

might need to visit them again for some peppers i was hoping they started for me but then i learned that those peppers didn't make it so we got more other peppers instead and now i may have some peppers there after all but they need to find them... we'll see if that happens... when i get closer to pepper planting i'll try again...

pretty much all the time i have now for nattering, time to get a snack and some water in me and then get out and weed, prep for onion planting...

 

[flowerbug]

beautiful day outside, got the onions planted, it was a long day but i got it done. came inside, ate and drank a little and then promptly crashed out for a few hour nap. woke up feeling mostly ok, yes my body knows it did a lot of work, but it really does respond well to dirt therapy and i don't at the moment detect any significant pains or other indications that i overdid it. i've been ramping up slowly, but today was like jumping on a skateboard and hitting some ramps and pipes, so i'm glad i didn't wipeout...

single raisin has now caught a fourth chipmunk. was quite a challenge to get it buried at the end of a long day. i hope it is really the last of them that has been making such a big mess. we'll see what the next few days bring to answering that question...

 

[flowerbug]

changing plans for today. North garden needs a few hours of weeding so i'm going to get the top part of that done and hold off on planting the peppers and tomatoes until after the next few days of rains are passed. cooler weather enough that perhaps it would be better to plant after too. we'll see how it goes.

 

[flowerbug]

the fifth and sixth chipmunks were trapped with the same raisin but the last one trapped must have eaten it as i didn't see it around anywhere.

reset the trap with a fresh raisin. no action so far...

i also hunted yet another chipmunk that was digging up all of my crocuses in the North Garden, it sure made a mess. there might be others contributing too, but won't know until the damage backs off or not.

the fancy flip top bucket traps did get a mouse but not any more chipmunks. eight chipmunks being trapped or hunted has certainly calmed things down here from before, but there are always some around. we have a lot of really prime habitat for them (supplied by Mom and ex-step-Dad piling rocks around) and if they don't use it the mice will.

it did rain last night and this morning so i'm enjoying the day by napping and my brother and SIL visited for lunch and then i took yet another nap. i must have needed it...

 

[flowerbug]

critters and gardening...

chipmunk war has calmed things down but i'm not sure i'm done for now or not. i'm pretty sure there was an entire family of four or more living in the hole that i'd been trying to keep closed off (by building a stonehenge of sorts). yesterday i may have finally trapped the last of them. we'll see how the next week goes.

today a pretty young deer came wandering into the back yard. there's no real easy exit from that area and Mom was yelling at it to scare it away but i really don't want to scare it into running into a fence. so i closed the door and it wandered around and chewed on some weeds and then it laid down on the grass for a few minutes. then it wandered around some more and even spent some time looking into some pieces of mirror we have in the pyramid (yard art that Mom made many years ago) and sniffing at that. then it finally wandered back to the front yard where i could go out and scare it away. it's the first deer i've seen in the yard during the day in quite a long time plus i've not seen any tracks at all in the past few weeks so i was getting complacent... i hope it stays away...

 

[Mini Horses]

All the larger rodents do a lot of damage. I'm catching these groundhogs! Boy can the dig