Paramount Protection

As if the continual struggle to maintain a socially respectable garden (or even a personally disappointing garden) wasn't enough, in addition to the obstacles of pounding rain, hail, late snows, early or late frosts, extreme temperature swings, tornadic winds, drought, insects, plant diseases, poor soil fertility, and just general calamity and misfortune, one must also consider the damages wrought by higher order creatures such as deer, rabbits, and the neighbor's occasionally-present dog.    

I've been oscillating all Spring on an action plan to limit the damage caused to my roses by a particularly prolific passel of rabbits in my garden.   At one point, a few weeks back, I recall looking out my back window and counting no fewer than 4 bunnies visible in my field of view (which likely doesn't even come close to the number that were hiding).  Bunnies, as many here are aware, don't eat daylilies or weeds or Wild Lettuce or native forbs, they preferentially eat, to my chagrin, roses, and go after the young tender ones first! When several young rose starts were pruned almost to the ground, I briefly contemplated ventilating their circulatory and respiratory systems with solid lead deterrents, but instead chose to spend $28 on a 25 foot spool of galvanized wire and made these protective cages, 11 of them so far.   I'll report back on how they work in the long run, but so far they seem to be keeping the rabbits away.

I was even more alarmed at finding this sight one morning; I've been watching this hollyhock patch daily, anticipating a fabulous bloom, but obviously another creature viewed it as an "all you can chomp" smorgasbord.  A creature measuring about 4 foot tall at the mouth and one that I suspect is hooved, with velvet lips and a fluffy white tail.   

The very sight panicked me, for this is just one "clump" in a large area of self-seeded hollyhocks, all otherwise healthy and forming some large delicate blooms.  I was counting on this patch to give me a luscious, even heavenly, hollyhock display, and now I was looking at the potential destruction of all of it, within a few nights, just bare stems and sadness left behind.  Should I stay awake all night with flashlights and a rifle at hand?  Keep pots and pans handy to startle them away? Hang soap and garlic from some stakes in the area?  Build a 10 foot tall peripheral fence topped with barbed wire and mined for 30 feet into the prairie?

Well, I won't keep you in suspense.   I ran quickly to the store to find a fresh supply of a repellent and chose this one.  Composed, among other things, of "putrid egg solids," I can attest, spraying it around the hollyhocks, that it indeed has an unpleasant odor, and I've found that Mrs. ProfessorRoush can detect it from more than 5 feet away, which is the closest she allowed me in her presence for quite some period of time after spraying the plants.  A week has gone by and the hollyhocks are blooming now and I can fully endorse it as a deterrent for close contact with deer and wives.  One takes a win where and when it occurs!

Oh, and the neighbor's dog?   Well, Liquid Fence doesn't work to keep that moron out of my flower beds.  In fact, evidently, rotten eggs are an aphrodisiac when you only have two neurons that synapse together.  At least the bumbling idiot hasn't trampled one of my wire cages yet!

Storm of a Lifetime (Not)

Although all the national media is calling the recent storm "The Storm of a Lifetime" or "The Storm of the Century", it is, in ProfessorRoush's experience, not even close, not even perhaps in the top 10 for such platitudes.   Perhaps I'm just jaded and old and tired of the over-copied refrain of panic the media attempts to produce every morning.   NBC's Today Show seems to have "special editions" every day now, and I'm sick of hearing about the nonexistent "Tripledemic" and good Lord, how much I miss the eternally cheery Robin Meade on Headline News.

But, moving along my digression, I personally remember two storms that hit Purdue University my freshman and sophomore years, heavier snowstorms than this which were accompanied by -50ºF wind chills, massive drifts and the first class cancellations Purdue had seen in 50 years.  And snowstorms in Ohio in '83 and '84 when I was a large animal dairy practitioner that closed roads for days and made me worry I would not make it home from a call; or not recover feeling in my frozen toes after a long day of work.  And half-inch-thick ice storms that destroyed trees and hail storms that flattened my garden.  So, as you can see from these pictures yesterday, a pittance of snow, an icy glaze to the blacktop, and -30ºF wind chills aren't nearly enough to be classified as once-in-a-lifetime.   Yes, they're dangerous, but they're certainly not unprecedented in human history.

Not much happening in the garden, these days, of a plantsman's interest, although life still abounds through the winter.  Checking the game cameras, I was pleased to see this handsome fellow along with several does in other pictures.  They don't seem to be coming as frequently as other years, nor have they caused much in the way of damage.

I was less pleased to see this picture, but at least this skunk was out and about in its normal nocturnal pattern instead of rabidly running around in daylight.  That being said, I'm glad it only appeared once in a season's pictures, numbering in the thousands since the summer.

There also seem to be increased numbers of coyotes frequenting the yard recently, even taking a leisurely rest here and there within gaze of the camera.   These two demonstrate the fact that they are aware of the camera, however, their somewhat creepy eyes staring directly at it and retinas reflecting the infrared light.   I've seen them occasionally out in the daylight, most often at dusk, and I do worry about them because they look a little mangy and thin, even for coyotes.   My concern ends, however, each morning and evening as I let Bella out the door and look closely over the edges of the yard, ever vigilant for her safety.

Well, with that all said, I leave you, this year, with "Merry Christmas!" and wishes for a blessed coming new year for everyone!  I'll be back here in January, always hopeful for a perfect garden and gardening year.

November Notes

Dr. and Mrs. ProfessorRoush set out on a quick run for tacos and Crumbl Cookies® last night, a quest for the perfect Saturday night snack combination.  Well, that, and Mrs. ProfessorRoush has developed an addiction for the aforementioned establishment's iced sugar cookies and we needed to lay in a reserve stash in case she developed a craving when they're closed on Sunday.   Happy wife, happy life and all that.  Anyway, we had no more pulled out of the driveway than we saw a beautiful stag and doe framed in perfect sunlight in the neighbor's front yard.

Unfortunately we missed the chance for an equally perfect photo of the pair, but on our return home a mere 45 minutes later, I spotted this lurker hanging just around the back corner of the neighbor's house.  In the way of deer, he was probably just waiting to see if he could hang around until the cover of darkness when he would happily nibble away on the neighbor's landscaping, so I foiled him by driving down a side lane and spooking him.  Not before, however, I captured these images in the closing light of day, through the dirty windshield, but still not a bad picture.  He's beautiful and I hope his proximity to town allows him to escape the hunting season since most folks around here don't shoot into the random horizon for fear of hitting a house.  Most folks, anyway.

I've got a busy week ahead, so I'm not making it a long post today.   I've got to spend some of today preparing for a Johnson County Master Gardener presentation about Rugosa and Old Garden Roses.  Since they're all that Rose Rosette disease has left me, you can bet that I'm going to touch on that hell-borne scourge as well.  Happily, I was in Kansas City a few weeks back and, in a large outdoor mall, captured this image (below) of three 'Knockout' roses in their landscaping, right, so-to-speak, in my audiences' back yard.   Most of the 'Knockout' roses on display there were exhibiting signs of RRD, so I think this picture will drive home my point about growing and breeding RRD resistant roses.

Creatures Gonna Creep

Creatures creep in my garden fair,

They sneak and crawl, go here and there.

They run, they jump, they eat, they fight,

They wander there most every night.

I think my garden mine alone,

They think the garden theirs to roam.

When nighttime falls, then out they come,

They're feeding off of my green thumb.

Deer and skunks and squirrels and coons,

The garden mine in afternoons.

At night, the garden, creatures own,

They sit upon my garden throne.

Share I must, I must not kill,

The creatures linger out there still.

I surrender all to them each night,

They cede the garden, mine each light.

ProfessorRoush collected his game cameras last month and I was surprised, as always, by the life of my garden at night.   I was less enthused at the skunk that made an appearance, but she seemed to be just wandering through.   The coyotes  are the most frequent visitors, patrolling the beds for rodents and generally just slinking around every night.   

But, I recognize that life in the garden is fleeting, here one minute and gone the next minute, just like the sudden starlings in the photo above and the empty ground a few seconds later of the photo below.  Notice the time stamp on these two pictures.  Life is fleeting in the garden.

 

Gardening? What's That?

Like an exile without a country, ProfessorRoush this week was a gardener without much of a garden.  Cold brisk weather and a little snow combined to drive me to indoor gardening, the latter a topic for the future, but I wandered outside a little here and there just to assess the premises.

And to feed the donkey's!  Several weeks ago, I occasionally began supplementing Ding and Dong's forage of the remaining stubby prairie with a little store-bought grass hay and they've quickly become accustomed to these little treats, hanging out on the weekends where I'll see them if I come out.  They've also come to expect apples during these visits, and yesterday seemed quite disappointed when I only showed up with hay, sending me a disdaining donkey look as only these apple-starved pair of prima donnas could.

Western Slender Glass Lizard

In a traipse around the back yard, I also came upon a new prairie citizen, at least new to me.  I think this frozen creature is not a snake, but a Western Slender Glass Lizard (Ophisaurus attenuatus) missing the end of his tail as they often do.  They are named because their tail breaks off easily to aid in escape from predators, but I'm going to have to concentrate to make sure I don't remember this as a "grass" lizard rather than "glass" lizard, being a prairie creature and all.  In coloration and skin pattern, he resembles the skinks of this area, but this guy was about 2 feet long and didn't have legs.  I don't know what he was doing out of his burrow laying upon a layer of snow, but I'll bet he regretted that decision.  In fact, I wasn't sure if he was alive or dead, but I was not about to bring him inside and warm him up to find out, possibly subjecting both the unaware innocent lizard and myself to the wrath of Mrs. ProfessorRoush.  I lifted him carefully with a snow shovel, carried him over to a straw-mulched bed, and placed him beneath a 6 inch layer of straw on the unfrozen ground.  There, he'll either be safe from hawks and other predators and thaw and survive, or he'll join the straw as eventual compost.

The only moving creatures in the garden beside the donkeys, Bella, and myself seem to be the ever-present deer.  I checked one of my new trail cameras yesterday and I'm quite happy with the results.  The pictures are much better quality than my previous camera, the shutter speed is faster and catches more animals, and the deer don't seem to notice the new camera around, or at least they aren't coming up to be nosy about the red light coming from it.  I expect a lot of more "candid" shots over the next few months, although many will not be perhaps as risque as the deer in the background which is depositing some fertilizer near my 'Yellow Bird' magnolia while in the view of another white-tailed voyeur.  I've even already captured a snap of a coyly cantoring coyote (below), the first that I believe I've gotten with a trail camera.   My garden seems to have a better night life than it's gardener!
 

  

Super Sunday!

Don't get mislead; ProfessorRoush cares not even a minuscule portion of his bones that it's Superbowl Sunday.  Well, perhaps a few deep cells of his bone marrow care that it is the last REAL football game until August, and it is one of the two sports I still watch enough to know who's on top (tennis is the other), but only when I'm entirely bored and stuck in front of a TV (which seems to be "never" these days, by choice).

No, what I do care about is that it is the second day of February, it is beautifully sunny outside, and my local temperature is predicted to be 66ºF at 2 p.m.   Right now, writing this, it is 57ºF outside and the back yard looks like the photo above, taken a few minutes ago, so I'm only here for a brief second.  Garden beds and sunshine are calling my name.

 
As you can see from the temperature reading on the second picture on this page, the temperature this winter hasn't always been nearly so nice, but that didn't keep the critters away.  I looked through the winter's selection of game camera photographs today as I removed my old game camera, and among other deer, there was a pretty nice stag rambling around at some point.  I'll have more fauna-captured photographs this spring and next year since I replaced my old camera with two newer and better game cameras.

Today is another milestone perhaps more important than the Superbowl to those of a superstitious bent. Today is, of course, 02/02/2020, a rare global palindrome and the only one of my lifetime.  The last such palindrome was 909 years ago (11/11/1111) and the next is 101 years away (12/12/2121), so forward or backward, I can't really hope for a life expectancy of 161 years to see the next one.  02/02/2020 is also a palindrome day of the year (the 33rd day) and a palindrome of the days left in the year (333 since it's a leap year).  And evidently, Las Vegas is promoting marriages today on the basis that if you married today, your 2nd anniversary would be 2/2/22, all symbolizing the pair-ness of monogamous marriage.   Myself, married some 37 years already, I'll just say goodbye to date palindromes like this deer turned tail and said goodbye to my game camera.

In other notes, I spent some time this morning searching for a word to describe the group of people who are over-stimulated by math like today's palindrome and along the way I was sidetracked by the discovery that there are "weird" numbers  (of which 70 is the first) whose proper divisors sum to greater than the number, and "happy" numbers, of which 1, 7, 10, 13, and 19 are the first 5 happy numbers of base 10.  Interesting to know, but none of this made me happy in base 10 or any other numeric base because I couldn't find the word I was searching for.  Anyone know a word to describe "math nuts"?  I'd spend more time looking myself, but I, and the lovely Bella, are out of here!   

Salacious Selfies

It was a week ago today that Bella, the garden defender, informed me that the deer were back grazing in the garden.  A few loud barks at 6:30 a.m., a furious nose pointing out the interloper(s) and she was praised for a job well done.   Can most beagles point?  I don't know if they all do, but my half-Beagle, half-Border Collie sure does.  She goes crazy and I just look down the line of her nose to find the disturbance.  Later, she chased one of the deer out of the garden, fierce and furious.

To my chagrin however, Bella and I ventured forth later to check the game camera and I discovered that she was indignantly posturing to cover her furry behind.  From October 17th through November 9th, my game camera captured 78 separate pictures of deer in this single small view of my garden . There are, as you can see, at least 4 different deer in the pictures on this page.  Two does together in a late afternoon shot (at left).  A large buck, at least 6 and maybe 8 points proud, with a couple of does with hiim (below).  Another smaller buck, with adolescent antlers (below left), likely the same one Bella chases from the garden in the gif above.

In fact, just two mornings ago I saw 4 deer at once from our bedroom window and the Stag wasn't among them, so at least 5 separate deer repeatedly visit the garden.  While I watched they meandered nonchalantly around the garden, nibbling here and there, sampling anything that retains moisture and chlorophyll, lifting their heads and staring at the slightest movement.  I swear that one, 60 feet away, saw me pry open two slats in the blind to see her better.  She froze and stared directly at the window, I froze in place, and eventually she went back to chewing the viburnum.

Deer seem to be inveterate self-takers, using my camera to preen and posture over and over.  Of the 78 pictures, at least over half are closeups of various partial body parts;  doey long-lashed eyes, rippling muscles,  twerking tails and other examples of ungulate pornography.  Deer seem to be fascinated by the camera and can probably see the infrared light, or hear the shutter.

Pose; click. "Rats, I blinked at that one."

Pose; click.  "Darn it, does my nose look too big?








Pose; click. "How's my profile, big boy?" At least one of them got it right, her lean and toned torso displaying perfect form, head held just right for the camera, a come-hither look in her eye.  This photo would do any deer-frequented Instagram account proud, don't you think?

Deer Gardens

The intrepid Bella jumped from our bed and ran into the sunroom yesterday around 6:45 a.m. and started barking madly.  When I crawled out bleary-eyed but prepared to defend home against marauder or monster, I found her perched on the back of the couch, back and nose and tail straight as an arrow pointing to the danger.  How does a beagle/border collie learn to point?  Beats me.


How many deer do you see in the photo above?  Two?  Three?  Look carefully.   As you can see at the right, there were actually four deer around (okay, there were only three in the first picture).   The large bush that the nearest deer is so avidly feeding upon is my two year old Salix caprea ‘Curly Locks’, the white French Pussy Willow.  I hope it left a few buds for ProfessorRoush to enjoy next month, once winter breaks from its current ice-locked cycle.  I'm tired of winter.



Tired too of the posers, those deer who try to justify their garden meals by allowing me a still picture of their exquisite form.  Just go away, girls.  Go have your spring fawns and leave my garden alone.  To be truthful, I don't think they do that much damage, and my really juicy shrubs, such as most of the magnolias and my ain't-Red HorseChestnut, are behind fencing anyway.  Man learns to adapt from the incursions of nature, even though adapting means that I view my garden in winter through that same wire fencing.




I did notice, last weekend, the damage shown on the base of this Hibicus syriacus ‘America Irene Scott’, which sits right beside the Pussy Willow.  At the time, I attributed it to a hungry rabbit or rodent, but now I'm wondering.  Is it time to defend more fervently against all enemies, hopping rodents or doey-eyed villains alike?

Round One; Advantage Me

ProfessorRoush has been busy and neglected his blog, but not particularly his garden.  It was a long, hot autumn, and I'm still diligently digging out Rose Rosette victims, which I can do in absent-minded fashion only while admiring how the grasses have bloomed.

I've put my garden away for winter, for the most part, and I'm looking forward to a long winter's rest.  One of my last chores, last weekend, was to replace a broken end-post on my vegetable garden's electric fence.  My rejuvenated strawberry patch has flourished this year and, last week, it occurred to me how delicious that tender green patch of strawberry leaves looked next to all the browned grass in the acres and acres around it.  Remembering the last time the patch looked so good, and remembering that the deer had, within weeks, chomped it down to the ground and destroyed the next season's strawberries, I resolved to immediately beef up my large-furry-rat defenses.

So I replaced the end post last week and fixed the electric fence where deer had already been through it, noting that its 10 year old charger was on its last legs. 














Lo and behold, I checked it again yesterday and discovered that the fence was again wrecked.  And, if you look closely at the picture at the right, you'll see that the varmints had eaten about half the leaves off, leaving naked stems, but thankfully they haven't yet eaten the crowns.











So yesterday, I replaced the charger with this brand-new, souped up charger pictured on the left, repaired the fence again, added a second line of twine strings to deter their attack, and baited the trap with the aluminum foil strips coated with peanut butter (see below).











My fiendish plan is for the deer to lick the peanut butter and get nasty shocks on their innocent little velvety tongues, providing a peanut-ty Pavlovian proselytism for their education.  I don't know how else to keep them away, short of chaining the intrepid Bella in the garden every night.

And yet this first morning, when I rose, I spotted the lone doe pictured at the top, from my kitchen window.   She meandered across the garden, joined two others in transit, and all proceeded to walk to the garden and stare at the new setup, the lush smorgasboard just beyond their reach.  Finally one reached up to the peanut butter, and then another, both reacting only slightly and then dejectedly moving away.  I suppose I won the first round, but I'm disappointed that they didn't get knocked off their feet and make a more hasty retreat.  More twine?  More fence?  Somehow, 25 quarts of homegrown strawberries at $4 a quart replacement value still seems worth it, don't you agree?   All this wire and plastic, though, isn't helping my carbon footprint.  Maybe it would be wiser to persuade my neighbor to take down his deer feeder.  Or to fill it with moldy corn.

Still Here...Until the Icepocalypse

ProfessorRoush hasn't slept in, self-defined as any prone position of my body after 6:00 a.m., for years, but I had plans to make it until at least 7:00 a.m. this first morning of a three-day weekend.  Unfortunately, Miss Bella decided that she needed to protect me against the meanderings of monsters sneaking about the prairie and she moved up from the bottom of the bed to sit on my chest, facing the door and huffing to indicate her alarm, around 6:30 a.m.  When she didn't stop, I got up to prepare defenses against a home-invading horde of Huns and found that my mildly obese mutt was correct in all ways except for the home-invasion.  This particular horde of Huns was perfectly content to keep grazing around the mailbox, undisturbed by the barking Bella behind the glass storm door.  Perhaps they were expecting delivery of a late Christmas package and awaiting the mail truck.

We are expecting an ice storm here sometime tonight, and while I am happily anticipating the enforced solitude and the early garden pruning that the storm will initiate, the rest of Manhattan seems to be fearing that the end of civilization is upon us.  A quick trip to the grocery store for sliced ham on the way home last night revealed that the neighboring population had cleaned out the local supermarket of all bread, milk, sticks of butter, and, to my surprise, every package of lunch meat available.  I came home, amused and complacent in the knowledge that we have enough dry cereal and pasta in the house to tide us over until planting weather.  I'm even more secure that we can make it to warm weather after this morning's sighting of potential food on the hoof.   If they are going to eat my roses, the least they can do is hang around for dinner.

I'm quite serious about hoping that we get enough ice tonight to flatten the garden.  At the end of next week, temperatures are forecast in the mid-50's and I'm in a perfect mood to bulldoze and start over anyway, so que sera sera.  I miss you, Doris Day.  What a beautiful voice and bubbly actress.  Once upon a time, movies and television programming was more interesting than a group of profane idiots arguing over who should or shouldn't be sleeping with whom.  

My Garden's Got Game

Until today, the sometimes dense ProfessorRoush has been under the impression that his garden has gone into hibernation for the cold days ahead.  Because of my "in-while-its-dark," then "home-while-its-dark" work schedule, my garden wanderings have become limited to weekend treks during the few hours of sunshine and tolerable temperatures.  Primarily, I get out into the garden for a few lovely minutes to exercise the portly Bella and make sure the trailer hasn't been stolen.

I was far wrong, however, about my garden being in hibernation.  While the plants may be biding their energy, a check of my game camera shows that there is plenty of game visiting my garden.   At least I can say "my garden's got game" with a straight face now.  In fact, I just realized that the number of larger mammalian bodies moving through the garden is greater now than at any other time of year, even without any attention from humankind.

From October 31st through December 3rd, my game camera has recorded 19 separate periods of invasion by large-furry tailed rats, some occurring over several hours time, with no discernible pattern as to time of the raids.  Early morning, late evening, middle of the night, all random.  On the camera, as shown in some of the photos here, I can distinguish at least 7 individuals, ranging from the beautiful and proud 10-point buck in the first photo, an 8-point buck, a buck with two broken stubs for antlers (left), an unknown number of does numbering at least two (several pictures have pairs), and at least two different fawns.


Interestingly, the ice storm seems to have affected their daily pattern as much as mine.  The only daylight photos of deer that I captured were taken in the days while ice was on the ground.  Perhaps they were desperate for food that wasn't ice-covered, or perhaps they feel safer moving loudly in the daytime than when they are alerting night predators with each ice-cracking step.








My garden's game is even playing games in the darkness.  The photographic evidence suggests that Follow The Leader is pretty popular, and Hide And Seek pick-up games are everywhere.  Look at the photo to the left;  Can you see the fawn standing in the bushes just behind the legs of the doe pictured here?  I'll give you a hint; locate the light-reflecting eye in the bush and then look for the hind legs to the left of it.


The only damage that has occurred to my garden seems to be part of a Purple Smoke Tree toppled by the ice, so I guess I won't get my dander up about damage that I can't find.  The deer can just have what rose rosette disease hasn't already taken and I'll pick up the pieces next spring.  Bella and I can still enjoy the garden, romping around in the sunshine as we did today.  I'll say one thing for sure; for a mildly obese dog, that Beagle-Border Collie mutt can run like a deer!