This critter could be eating one of my tulip bulbs, maybe even enough of them to ruin my meticulously planned Tulip Design of 2006 (alert the media.) But in 2005 every one of the tulips I planted came up, so I’ll tempt fate here and say I found a fool-proof formula for squirrel deterrence. To wit: red pepper flakes – cheap and plentiful. I throw a few flakes into each hole just above the bulb before replacing the rest of the dirt. I see squirrels perusing the border but they don’t even dig.
So squirrels, to you I say: HA!
Maybe you Canadians know all about David Hobson, but I just discovered him – thanks to one of you who linked to him – and am sold. A humor writer who covers what I'm into? I'm there. This is a shot of his garden in Ontario someplace, and you should see his shots of Chelsea. I hate traveling my air nowadays, so I'll let Dave show me any day.
Dave's garden has apparently won awards, which just burns me up. See, here in the States we don't even have garden competitions, and I'm jealous of folks who live in a culture that really celebrates gardening. Just another reason I wish I'd moved to Canada years ago. If you visit Dave at Gardengripe or any of his related sites, I'll see you there.
Why my neighbors’ Hydrangea quercifolia ‘Snow Flake’ is so colorful is beyond me. My own unnamed oakleaf goes right from green to brown. Maybe it’s those hot hort researchers again, making our favorite plants better.
But while I’m at it, let me sing the praises of all oakleaf hydrangeas, no matter the coloration. Talk about your can-do plant. Full sun to full shade – no problem. Pruning? Not needed. Unlike almost all hydrangeas, it’s not particularly thirsty. And whether as lone accents or massed as they are here, they’re spectacular in three seasons.
It’s a gorgeous fall day here in Maryland, so I decided to take a walk through the woods somewhere. I could have piled in the car and driven an hour or so to reach a park with hiking trails, but instead I just took the woodland path that starts at the end of my garden.
See, my little house and garden are part of a deep wooded valley with a creek running along the bottom, at least during and after rains. Over the years the 30 or so neighbors who share this slice of heaven have cleaned out the old refrigerators and built a few bridges over the creek. Kids and their dads have created forts and play areas. There’s finally a critical mass of neighbors who care about this little ecosystem, and we’ve almost liberated all the trees from their invasive vines. There’s a lot more to do on that score but with enough organized workdays, it’ll happen.
Now some of you have posted lovely photos of not only natural views from your homes but from even your office windows, and I’ve been jealous as hell. But if you’ll allow me some bragging rights of my own, this woodland paradise is waay inside the beltway and only 12 minutes by subway from Capitol Hill, which makes living in a large metropolis just about okay with me.
Quick – what’s your association with the term "garden club"? Mine has always been of a snooty bunch of white women who don’t work and use the club for purposes of social climbing – everything I wanted to avoid in an organization. Then I got involved in my town’s young, ultra-eco-minded, anything-but-snooty "hort club" and I found my people. But it wasn’t always that way.
As recently as the 1970s, even this club was open by invitation only, which is how they exluded people they considered undesirable. Even harder to imagine, I’ve heard there are garden clubs that give the boot to members who get divorced. Then there’s the garden club highlighted in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," which not only was white, wealthy and exclusive, but seemed to exist for the sole purpose of having bourbon-soaked lunches.
So I’m wondering how far we’ve really come from the bad old days of garden clubs. I was encouraged to find a few kindred clubs in the D.C. area, but then I came across the local chapter of the venerable Federation of Garden Clubs. Hey, I like networking, so I naturally inquired about my club joining the federation and was sent an application for admission. The application form asked us to list our club officers and then – and I’m not making this up – to indicate the officers’ "husbands." Oh, and their own officers are listed by their husbands’ names (Mrs. John Smith). Help! I’m having a ’50s flashback. And naturally all their events are during working hours because these ladies either don’t have to work or are all retired, I suppose. On top of all that, to affiliate with them we’d have to pay them $8 for every one of our members, every year. I’ll do the math for you. Our 150-member club would have to pay these troglodytes $1,200 every year (2/3 of our dues income) for the privilege of being affiliated and would still have to pay extra to attend any of their events.
I’m sure you’re scratching your head and wondering why any club would pay that kind of money and get virtually nothing in return. My informants tell me it’s because some club officers like to socialize
with this bunch at their luncheons – see, it’s those damn luncheons again.
Now I still love to network, so I started an email group for garden clubs – FREE – and we have five clubs represented so far, but there hasn’t been much activity. Anybody out there know of another way to tap into the collective wisdom of organized gardeners?
Oh, and you’re wondering what this photo has to do with garden clubs? Not a thing, but I love a good visual and this is very recent. I think it’s a Nyssa sylvatica, the locally native black gum, in its first year in my neighbor’s garden. But then it could be an sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum). Remember I told you I hadn’t identified all their plants yet?
It all started when I couldn’t find clover seed at my corner hardware store. They’d had it in bulk last year but not anymore. So I do the sensible thing. Having had a few successful transactions on Ebay, both buying and selling, I put "clover seed" in their search engine and ended up making a purchase from somewhere in Canada. That was my first mistake, not realizing how long it takes to get a tiny package from there to here. Three weeks later the truly tiny thing arrived with this written on the outside: "Glass Beads." What the hell? Tearing open the package, I find indeed a couple of hundred glass beads. Next stop, the Ebay sales information, carefully filed away with my saved email messages. Of course I’m thinking this seller has screwed up and this wrong will be righted.
The denouement to this tale of frustration is that I found the following description of what I’d bought: "GREEN CLOVER bunch-of-letters-and-numbers glass beads." Man, I hate it when it turns out I’m the one who screwd up, although in this case can you blame me? And remember I wanted to plant the damn stuff a month ago.
Okay, the beads arrived on Monday and I’ve calmed down by now. I made constructive plans to check out another hardware when I’m out driving around today, but there isn’t one handy. Now I’m really proud of the next bit. I went right back to Ebay and ordered the presumably right thing this time, and for much less ($3 including shipping versus the original $11). And it’s from the faster side of the U.S.-Canada border – I’m hoping – in good old Maine. Wish me luck.
This critter could be eating one of my tulip bulbs, maybe even enough of them to ruin my meticulously planned Tulip Design of 2006 (alert the media.) But in 2005 every one of the tulips I planted came up, so I’ll tempt fate here and say I found a fool-proof formula for squirrel deterrence. To wit: red pepper flakes – cheap and plentiful. I throw a few flakes into each hole just above the bulb before replacing the rest of the dirt. I see squirrels perusing the border but they don’t even dig. 
