"License to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. Man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit - ever. They're like the Viet Cong - Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that's all she wrote. " - Bill Murray, Caddyshack (1980)
SO... my first contribution. I am slightly embarrassed at the effort I have put forth, however, at the same time, my own blog was abandoned at nearly the same time as this one, dare I say it, sprouted. I just want to clarify that this blog wasn't ignored, my love of blogging was in general... and while life chores have eaten up all my blogging time. My "garden" has been eaten up by pests...
Of the 18 date palms I planted in November, 0.5 remain. The culprit - squirrels. Now, I would not have a problem with this if these squirrels were hungry, or demonstrated a shred of intelligent / adaptive behaviour (ie. all date palms look and taste the same, if you didnt like it the first time, dont eat 17 more). That being said, they have grazed on every potted plant I have, usually chewing off a limb / stem and just leaving it on the ground. This leads me to believe they are just bored with life (explains why so many jump infront of moving vehicles) and take pleasure ruining potted plants. Even with my degree in animal behaviour, there is no logical explanation for this maniacal, clearcutting-esque behaviour as of yet.
That being said, there has also been an explosion of earwigs with all this damp / cool weather in London, Ontario. Earwigs love chewing up foliage. So whatever stems/branches the squirrels are leaving, the earwigs are climbing up and chewing the crap out of. Earwigs are the worst insect ever, so nasty. I am a trained entymologist, so don't question my ranting.
Additionally, the plot I created in March to plant my indoor potatoes, is now completely shaded over. In fact, the entire back yard is shade. Where I used to be able to go out and do exercises in the AM in bright sunshine and gaze lovingly at my crop, is now a mosquito filled, creepy, sun-permanently-blocked, bog-like area. I am growing more and more restless with the amount of shade, mold, smell of rot and the amount of foilage in the tree's above. If only i could launch the earwigs up there... sadly no, so I will wait until my roommate / landlord is out of town, before I get to drinking one afternoon and fulfill one of my life goals of being a lumberjack. My fellow contributors are welcome to join, we can even blog / document while we get down to work. [Potential Title "Gravity and The Unbalanced Gardener"]
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Clearcutting little buggers indeed! And a badly-placed shade-tree to polish things off. . . and earwigs too?
ReplyDeleteThe question is what would a real avante sort of gardener do in a situation like this? Obviously you need some sort of elabourate squirrel trap, that much is evident, in order to protect the remaining 0.5 of a date palm. Maybe something involving a tasty treat and a teetering cinder block? Is that going too far?
With regard to the tree problem, what do you think of giant mirrors?
What do you think of covering the stalks of the plants with glue so that when the earwigs tried to climb up they'd get stuck?