Winter
2012
Soon
after we moved to Moscow, Idaho, I set up our bird feeders. Four
golden-brown squirrels quickly laid claim to our yard. They divided
the territory among them, with two leading raids on the backyard
feeders and the other pair practicing acrobatics in the front-yard
apple tree. For awhile, those four little rodents bulked up so much
that I could hear small branches creaking when they shimmied up the
trees. After I wised up and bought squirrel-proof feeders, they lost
a bit of weight and increased their workouts, trying to outsmart me
As
autumn set in, I worried about my bushy-tailed pals, and hung
peanut-flavored suet cakes in metal cages from the trees. The
squirrels stopped shaking their tiny fists at me, and bulked up
again. The suet feeders also attracted small woodpeckers, as well as
our regular feathered customers. But after the first big snowfall in
November, I looked out the breakfast-nook window and noticed that the
suet cake’s metal cage was missing. I put on my boots, tramped out
to the front yard, and checked all around the apple tree. The
squirrels had unhooked the holder before and left it on the ground,
but this time, no suet cage lay anywhere in the yard. The falling
snow had even hidden the squirrels’ tracks, so I couldn’t follow
their trail.
Months
later,after the snow melted, my husband finally found the metal suet
holder. It lay near our back fence, empty, of course, at the base of
the squirrels’ favorite apartment, a huge pine tree. We laughed at
their craftiness, but I also squirreled away a lesson from those
little bandits. They were thinking ahead. I had foiled them once
with the dratted squirrel-proof bird feeders, and they weren’t
going to be humiliated (or hungry) again.
Now, in
the middle of winter’s dormant season, I,squirrel-like, have
started thinking ahead and writing notes in my day-planner for the
coming spring. The first note involved promoting one member of my
garden staff and demoting another, effective immediately. The
promotion went to Kaylee, our golden retriever, who became the
official garden supervisor. During the past year, I noticed her
managerial ability to delegate, while she lay under the nearest tree
and closed her eyes to meditate.
I
already had placed the third member of my staff, Benjamin
BadKitten,on probation for snagging small finches at the birdbath in
the front yard. I counseled him daily. He did not listen. So the
demotion, unfortunately, landed on our Old English sheepdog, Winston
Ragsdorf (aka Rags.) After his previous efforts, he could no longer
be trusted without supervision. In our first autumn here, I left a
pile of grape hyacinth bulbs unguarded while I went inside for water.
When I came back, the grape hyacinths were gone, and Rags was lying
in a patch of dirt, far from the bulb bed. When spring arrived, I
realized he had made his own garden that day. Dozens of blue grape
hyacinths bloomed in a ragged patch, away from the tulips and
daffodils, where I’d planned to use them as accents. My sheepdog,
who is as clever as he is cute, had hurriedly buried those little
bulbs and lain across them to hide his crime.
When I
make my gardens this year, I will trust some of my other instincts
more fully, too. I will keep intact the springtime containers I
planted of jewel-colored ranunculas, pansies and trailing annuals,
and will not transplant them into a garden bed, where they will lose
their drama and style. I will remember that June is not too late to
plant peas here in northern Idaho. In our previous home near
Seattle, I had to plant my pea patch in April, or they would mature
too late and turn tasteless. Now I will take advantage of our
growing season here, and we will enjoy fresh green peas this summer.
I will
also listen to the warning chime in my head and plant tomatoes in
raised garden beds, instead of in patio containers. Those raised
beds will be secure behind a fence, far from the marauding tendencies
of the two tomato-loving dogs on my garden staff.
In an
opposite strategy from my squirrely friends, I will not hoard
years-old seeds over the winter. When I blithely planted entire
packets of ancient seeds last spring, I imagined lush flower beds,
frothing with blooms. Instead, from the hundreds of seeds, I got
only a few straggling perennials. Not even the hardy annual seeds
could survive their years in the seed packet.
As
winter continues, I'm taking care of my squirrel pals. I have bought
cakes of their favorite suet and hung them again in green wire cages.
This time, though, the little cages will be wrapped securely with
wire around the tree branches that hold them. Every few days, I toss
handfuls of unshelled, unsalted peanuts under the huge oak tree in
our side yard, and watch the little guys sit up on their haunches as
they meet for lunch.
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