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!

My Menagerie

 Sometimes, I wonder what I'm running here on the prairie;  a garden or a zoo?  Just one of my game cameras took over a thousand "snaps" in the past two months.  I'll give you a brief sampling to show you the drama you're probably missing in your own garden, and in the spirit of true suspense, I'll save the most exciting until the last.

Of course, many of the pictures are of ProfessorRoush and deer; of the beautiful Bella sniffing the ground (upper right) and minding anything but her own business, and of the goofy neighbor's dog who uses my yard as a personal toilet (left) almost every day.

I seem to have gained a red squirrel here, frantically gathering pecans and acorns in my yard.  I've never had a squirrel live here before but he's somewhere out there because I had hundreds of pictures of him in this bunch.  I'll have to figure out which tree he's nesting in.

Birds are plentiful in the pictures, including this bluebird sweeping in for a landing and the red house finch, below, who is taking a break in the shade.  There are also pictures of other finches, meadowlarks, and sparrows temporarily on the ground here.

And the smaller wildlife is well represented.  I'll spare you the pictures of the mouse and the chipmunk and the rabbits and the raccoon who come in for candid closeups once in a while.

Nightlife?  Oh, there's plenty around.  It abounds, around, you might say.  I could do without this striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis), even if it is just passing through, and then there is this creature below skulking through the night, which I think is a gray fox (Urocyon
cinereoargenteus).  I saw him much better just this morning at dawn, crossing the yard heading for the hills to my west.  He's been in other views on both cameras periodically all summer.

You wouldn't think that a stationery camera snapping pictures based on motion would be good for anything but occasional still shots, and yet this one captured, at one point, the drama present in most  every garden.  I'll show you the full capture of these pictures, because the time stamps are important.  Here, at 12:13:24 pm on 10/02/2020, is my red squirrel, lower right corner, out playing in the grass as it has a hundred times before:

And then at 12:16:31, we see this hawk sweep in, a fraction of an inch from grabbing the squirrel that is diving for the goldenrod and safety at the edge of the bed.  Are we witnessing the fury of nature?

At 12:16:32, there's the hawk, sitting in the grass.  What does he have clutched in those talons?  Have I seen the last of my red squirrel? 

I only had to wait until the next picture; 12:19:49, and the red squirrel is back out again, doing it's squirrley-things.  I think I'd have waited a little longer, myself, to be sure the hawk was gone.

I apologize about the picture-heavy post, but it is the best glimpse of life out there in the garden that I can give you.  Please try not to spend the next week wondering, as I will, if the squirrel made it to winter and what else may be sneaking around out there in the garden.