Dear Reader,
My apologies; I’ve been absent too
long. During the missing months I purchased
the house I’d been renting and started a new garden. It took a year of planning and months of construction
and installation. The result so far has
been more successes than failures; not a bad scorecard. I have much to report, but illogically I’ll start
at the end and work my way back to the beginning during the winter.
At War with the Squirrels
As Washington careens towards conflict
with North Korea, I have launched a pre-emptive strike against my enemy -- the
squirrels. They are in the middle of
their seasonal cycle, laying waste to a crop of walnuts. My garden is beautifully shaded by the
dappled light of black walnut trees, but I pay a steep price when the nuts
start to fall.
My terrace is one of the areas so
beautifully shaded. Why did I choose to
locate a terrace directly in the line of fire, you might well ask? Despite having a few years to observe the
pattern of falling walnuts and the habits of squirrels, I did this out of sheer
stubbornness and the belief that is it my right to sit outside my kitchen door.
And, evidence to the contrary, I was convinced that I could outwit the
marauders.
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| Newly-laid Bluestone |
But they are so clever. Last year my neighbor couldn’t start his car,
and lifted the hood to find his engine compartment neatly packed with
walnuts. My plan was to head the
squirrels off at the pass, collect the nuts and deliver them to the dump before
the squirrels could get to them. But I
underestimated their determination.
For weeks last year I collected each
day’s crop of fallen walnuts and stored them in the car for delivery to the
dump. The squirrels, infuriated, would
wait for me to emerge for the morning collection and shake the overhead branches
so furiously I needed a hard hat to work outdoors.
My squirrels are not inclined to store
their nuts in my car’s engine compartment because, unlike my neighbor’s house,
here they have paving to work on. They
are busy collecting the nuts, piercing the shells that have not smashed open on
the paving, taking off the shells on the long front bluestone walk or the new rear
terrace, laying the nut meats on the tree branches to dry, and eventually
storing them for the winter.
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| Walnut Ink Stains on Bluestone |
My daughter, a zoo veterinarian, says
squirrels are trainable. Her suggestion was to rig up a cloth across the blue
stone terrace, cut a hole in the middle and put a large basket under the hole
to collect the walnuts. Then build a
bench of the same stone alongside the terrace; hang a small basket level with
the new bench; transfer the nuts from the large basket to the small and the
squirrels will learn to use it. This
plan did not pass muster.
I believe her theory in principle, thus
the first line of attack is to train the squirrels. This year I am collecting all the walnuts and
depositing them in the rear corner of the garden; a pantry if you will. Having observed the squirrels shelling the
nuts on the aforementioned single slab of bluestone that is my front walk and
the 4’ bluestone squares of my now unusable terrace, I’ve paved an area
adjacent to the walnut pantry with bluestone; a kitchen table if you will. It is too soon to tell if it’s working. So far there has been no sign of activity,
but I remain optimistic.
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| Squirrel Training Station |
The second stage of the offensive is to cover
the terrace with some garden-esque form of protection. There is already an arbor to the east of the
terrace offering tactful screening of the house next door. We could build another arbor on the west side,
cover it with lathe and plant vines. The
lathe alone would not be sufficient to prevent walnut husk fragments from falling
through, but if we erected an open frame peaked roof, and then covered that
roof seasonally with a strong shade cloth … well, you can see where this is
going. Who are the “us”and “we”? Whoever will take on the construction of this
folly.
In the meantime, there is a lot of
scrubbing of trim and collecting of walnuts.
The only bright spot in this story is a wonderful new tool from the
Lehman’s Catalog: The Nut Wizard. It’s a round wire basket with a long handle
that rolls merrily across the lawn with only a gentle push, effortlessly collecting
all in its path. It is available in
Small, Medium or Large, depending upon the size of your nuts, crabapples or
golf balls.
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| The Nut Wizard |
