Tree Holes and Ground Tunnels

ProfessorRoush has been absent from the blog lately, but I've not been idle!  Various work and other duties have stolen my time away from the garden and the blog, including the loving, care, and feeding of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.   We're nesting a bit, buying some furniture upgrades and aiming for some functional and cosmetic house improvements.  One thing to watch for is a report on the Great Deck Replacement Project of 2026!

Meanwhile, last year's Amaryllis is beginning to bloom again (photo top right).  I keep these "disposable" bulbs in large pots outside during the summer after they've bloomed, and then I winter them in the garage from late October through January once their foliage starts to dry.   I brought this pot indoors about mid-January and began to water it and the 3 bulbs of the pot have thrown up 3 strong flower stems (4 if you include the one that Mrs. ProfessorRoush snapped off this week by closing the adjacent window on it).  In the background of the photo above, you can still see the fog that stuck around until about 11am today (photo at left).  Hey, at least we don't have snow anymore!

One thing I wanted to include today was a plea to not be quite so tidy in your gardens that you destroy habitat.  This seedless cottonwood near the barn died last year, its weak wood topped by wind and snow, and I almost removed it this summer; or, more accurately, offered to "let" a friend remove it for the lousy firewood it would hold.  I changed my mind when I realized a flock of cedar waxwings were using it this spring as a collecting perch for their flock and I decided to keep it around another year.

And now a year later, it holds a secret and I can't bear to think about cutting it down.  A couple of months ago, as I was staring at these wretched skeletal remains and thinking about brittle, falling, cottonwood limbs, I noticed that it now holds a residence for a large "something."  Look closely at the previous photo and you'll see this 3"X4" nest hole about 2/3rds of the way to the top of the trunk.  Squirrel?  Owl?  Hawk?  I haven't seen the new resident coming or going yet, so its identity is a mystery right now, but I'm willing to wait and watch.  Personally, I'm hoping for "owl"; a nice screech owl family would be welcome tenants.

So, the new cottonwood hole is a great example of letting nature have its choice in our gardens, to increase our tolerance for that  planned garden neglectfulness that Mirabel Osler described in A Gentle Plea for Chaos.  I'm advocating for that, and yet at the same time, I'm wondering what creature is behind a second mystery that is occurring in my garden and I'm planning an attack on the latter.  Can you see the raised, superficial tunnels in the photo at right?   My back landscape beds are filled with them and they extend slightly into the yard around.  If I were back home in Indiana, where I encountered this frequently in the soft, sandy soil of my boyhood home, I'd say these were moles, but I've never had moles here before in my garden, nor found them at large in the prairie surrounding me.  The ground is just likely too heavy and rocky to entice them to even try to tunnel here.  These current tunnels are only in the cultivated bed and area of the grass and I fear they're another form of incursion into my space by pack rats and I won't tolerate that.   My embrace of natural ecology only extends so far!

Brave New World

2026 has just begun and I'm already salivating with the anticipation of another spring and summer ahead.  I certainly felt that 2025 ended on a high note, prompted, perhaps, by this amaryllis, a Christmas gift from a friend, that began blooming the day after I received it and bloomed across both Christmas and New Year's Day.  It is just now beginning to fade into the background and I need to remove the "waxy rubber" coat from the bulb, pot it up, and see if I can coax it to bloom again next year.  It certainly bloomed itself onto center stage for the holidays, a bright spot indoors when the seasonal grays imposed.  Look upon it, all ye, and despair not!

Outside, in the garden, all is quiet and dormant.  I keep the bird feeders filled with sunflower and thistle in the hope of keeping SOME movement and life in the garden, all while I also keep the rat bait stations filled to diminish the pack rat population and quell the seeming overpopulation of the filthy creatures.  I have recently noticed some "tunneling" in my back bed, and I'm wondering if moles are making a first-ever incursion into my garden or if the pack rats are merely switching tactics.

Garden statues, and other garden "bones", stand out in winter.  Mine are even more gray this year because I recently observed that my beloved "reading angel", a long-ago birthday gift from my wife and daughter, was disintegrating.  She had toppled over in fall, and her wings were in pieces on the ground and her concrete weathered and worn out on exposed dorsal surfaces.   Another statue, a long-eared rabbit, had lost an ear and broken off a paw over time.  I repaired both as best I could with some concrete patch repair and then I spray-painted most of my plain concrete statues to protect them, with the resulting flat gray appearance you see here.   Once it warms up, if the paint seems to protect them from weather and freeze-thaw cracks, I'll spray other concrete statues and then keep them painted in rotation.  One must care for our bones!

At this time of year, any color other than brown and umber stands out in the garden, so I was delighted to find this Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' in fine leaf and full variegation despite the frigid temperatures we occasionally see.   I have transplanted this clump twice over the years, and it has cloned itself locally, but this cultivar doesn't seem to have near the self-seeding tendencies of my more common variegated Yucca varieties.  And therein lies my primary observation of this blog entry;  whenever you actually want a near-ideal plant to spread like a weed, they don't, but turn your back on any  common perennial and they'll soon be choking out your most prized plants!

Have a happy and productive 2026 gardening year, my friends!