Thursday, June 7, 2007

Help yourself


Some chipmunk (not this one), I think, was responsible for coming up on our back deck and biting the heads off the sunflowers we'd started. He or she also managed to pull out a couple of the seeds that hadn't sprouted yet and ate them (after taking off the shells and leaving them there for me to find). The reason I'd started the seeds in pots on the porch rather than directly in the garden is because the birds tend to pull up the seeds in the garden. I try to take a peaceful approach to all of this -- oh, there's some great line of folk wisdom from some culture (yeah, my memory is razor sharp) about how you plant some percentage of your garden for the little creatures of the world. And we often watch rabbits munching away at our flowerbeds (guess all the clover in the lawn isn't good enough for them?) and just love them all up and don't worry about what it means for the flowers. (We figure the poop they leave behind works as fertilizer.) We've pretty much stopped trying to grow vegetables because we lack the space to plant enough to get our own share after feeding all the little creatures of the world, and the little fenced-in plot is now Dean's butterfly garden. I'll attempt cherry tomatoes and basil in pots on the deck (so far, no one has chewed off the heads of the tomato plants) knowing that we usually come out all right there. Now that I think on it, our little creatures make out pretty well here, given that we also provide a veritable free market in the compost piles where they can (and do) help themselves to all manner of local and exotic produce bits. I just wish the birds wouldn't poop so much on the swingset.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this made me laugh as we too have given up on a vegie garden because all we were doing was feeding the wildlife!! But how gorgeous having chipmunks!!! I grew things in pots near the front door thinking they would be safe but no, PEACOCKS were coming right up and taking the lot!

Donna Layton said...

Nature can be pretty greedy can't she?? We have more problems out here than I could possibly explain here in this forum. There are some years we have grasshoppers in Biblical proportions. It's astonishing and heartbreaking. We're having a huge storm and I know I'm about to lose power. I'll finish catching up tomorrow. How did I get so behind??? Where have I been???