Revenge of the bushy-tailed 'frienemy'!

Frienemy #1

Wow!  How hard to believe so many days have passed since my last post.  'Would love to say it's because I've been really busy, but . . . well, actually I have been really busy!  (Very enjoyable weekend with my daughters, celebrating beautiful Megan's 13th birthday, then having step-son as houseguest this week)

I finally allowed myself to come to terms with ripping the still-trying summer annuals from their dirt-y beds and replacing them with the seasonal offerings of the local garden center.  Tight budget meant that I was on the lookout for bargains - like the 50¢ garden mums at Walmart.  Although they were quite small, I convinced myself that buying lots of them and grouping them would be more penny-wise than paying the $4.64 they wanted for the larger ones.  After taking them home and doing the math, I realized that I'd not only bought myself more work than necessary, I spent more than necessary as well. 

And pansies.  I've been brainwashed by the garden center ads and the guy from Huntsville Botanical Garden who does a weekly segment on our ABC affiliate that pansies are the must-have plant for Northeast Alabama winters.  So I invested all I could scrounge - even robbing my change bucket - to buy pansies.  Beautiful pansies! 

I happily spent hours and hours on my knees talking encouragingly to them as I nestled their little dirt-covered roots into the ground, along with those bargain-priced mums and a smattering of small ornamental cabbage and kale.  As I dug, I was keenly aware of a squawking and barking high above my head.  It was my garden's resident squirrel.  My bushy-tailed frienemy.  The same one who ate my petunias all summer.  I should have known I was in for trouble!  As my garden spade parted the dirt, preparing to receive my beautiful new pansies, mums and cabbage/kale, I (too often) displaced a big fat hickory nut - much to the displeasure of my noisy buddy up in the tree.  He was none too happy that I was undoing all his nut-burying work, and was telling me about it in no uncertain terms.

Each time my spade unearthed a nut, I'd look up into the tree, apologize quite sincerely to the unhappy rodent, and would promise to place the nut back in its hiding place and position my plant elsewhere.  And I kept my promise - each time.  I completed my planting tasks, gave everything a good soaking (no rain here - at all - almost all summer - 13" below normal rainfall already this year) and stood back to admire the new Autumn dressing I'd given my garden.  I thought all was well. . .  until the next morning . . . when I returned excitedly to visit my new plant friends. . . only to find half of them out of the dirt and carelessly tossed aside! 

After calming myself and determining that I wouldn't let my bushy-tailed frienemy get the better of me, I cheerily placed the abused little plants back into their dirt-y holes and assured them things would be okay.  Until the next morning.  And so it has been every morning for the past week . . . I plant, and the squirrel digs.  Repeatedly.  And the pansies he's not digging up, he's eating.  Eating the blooms, leaving the stalks sticking up in the air like a garden of bamboo kabob skewers!

Handsome Hubby suggested littering the garden beds with moth balls.  But since the tea olive have just begun to bloom, and I've waited all summer for that fragrance, I said "thanks, but no thanks".  Then he suggested red pepper around the base of the plants.  He assured me the squirrel wouldn't like the red pepper.  Wrong.  The squirrel may not like the red pepper, but he doesn't seem to mind it, either.  He's so mad with me that I don't think steel mulch in the beds would deter him from exacting his revenge!

Tomorrow I'll shop for a yard of white fabric to make my "surrender" flag.