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Thank you for your continued interest in my blog. Hopefully, I’ll start posting more soon! I thought the pandemic would be a great opportunity to get started again. But, like many people, I just didn’t get that done.
GARDENING
Since I am sitting and writing, I’ll share my ramblings about gardening. First, there was the “snowpacolypse”(as one of my friends named it), that we’re still recovering from. Along with everyone else, I lost most of the rosemary. The xeriscape garden, along with the greenhouse, was decimated. But the agave decided it better bloom, before anything else happened!
Trying to put my most optimistic spin on it, I thought – great, I’m sure it killed a lot of pests. But, apparently prolonged freezing weather does not kill grasshoppers. How could that possibly be? So far, the grasshoppers are not in full force, and I’ve been able to manage the small ones with my favorite garden spray. I usually use nolo bait, but the manufacturer has stopped making it for this season.
Next, we had 2 small opossums on the rainwater tank, in back. At first, I panicked, then did some research. Interestingly and shockingly, they are good for your garden. Click here, for information on opossums.
Our most recent plague has to do with our backyard garden plants being eaten – the bean plants, sweet potatoes, some of the tomato plants, fennel, and purslane. In the beginning, I thought it was worm or larvae damage. I treated for that, but never saw any insect invader. Then I thought well, maybe it’s a rabbit or raccoon, because they can get around the deer netting. But now, some of the destruction is so high and on such large stalks, it can’t be a short animal. So, I’m focused on my most longstanding nemesis, the deer. I think at least one has figured out how to crawl under the wildlife netting. Really? There’s a whole field to eat.
The update is that we finally caught a deer on our security cameras. It came under the netting and was surveying the backyard smorgasbord! For those who know me, my favorite deer are the ones on my dinner table! So, we had a fencing project this week.