Why I Have No Blueberries or Sunflowers

 {Giant mammoth sunflowers growing in containers, 2011}

First -- a big Thank You to the lovely Tammy of Casa Mariposa for the kind words of solidarity in my on-going Battle Against the Squirrels. Thanks for the support and encouragement, Garden Sister! If you'll indulge me, I have one more sad story to tell....

{The giant containers I usually use for sunflowers. This year they hold my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes.}

This is the first year that I will not have sunflowers in my garden.  We have successfully grown sunflowers in containers in years past, but this year I'm using those giant containers for my Mortgage Lifter tomatoes. However, I do still have some Teddy Bear sunflower seeds, and I saved one pot for those flowers. I wanted to have their sunny yellow blooms near my front door. But here we are in mid-July, and I still don't have sunflowers. Squirrels dug the seeds out of the pots every time I planted them. I'd find piles of dirt and holes in the pot, the bastards. They even climbed up on the deck and dug them out of the starter flats. I finally moved everything to a protected location, and when the seeds sprouted and were transplanted, I waited until the plants were big enough to move the pot to the front yard.

 {Here's a picture of the flowers I don't have in my garden.}

One morning I left the house and noticed that each Teddy Bear leaf had been perfectly snipped. I don't think that was the work of a squirrel, though. I think that was the little rabbit I've seen hopping around and destroying my neighbors' gardens. I'm having a hard time getting angry at this rabbit, though. I volunteer at an animal shelter and that means I sometimes care for and play with rabbits, and feed them treats. To me he's just a poor little homeless bunny trying to survive in the wild, scary DC suburbs. What's a couple of leaves here and there? Besides, the flowers are coming back, sort of...

So here's the double standard: I have no such sympathy for those little rodent squirrels. When I was younger I used to laugh when my friends told me stories about their parents and grandparents flipping out over squirrels in their garden and trapping them and dropping them off across county lines.  Old people are so weird!, I used to think. Well now I'm an old person, and I TOTALLY get it! The rabbit may have only caused damage to my Teddy Bear leaves, but (as I mentioned in a previous post) the squirrels climb up on the deck and getting into my raised beds and are tearing up everything!!  Take my blueberry plants, for example. My husband built this mesh net around the blueberries to protect them from the birds and squirrels.  One day I saw that some of the berries were starting to turn bluish-purple, and they were almost ready for harvesting. I went back the next day to harvest them, and they were gone! Plucked right off the vine. Something had chewed a hole through the net. We fixed it and waited for a few other berries to ripen. A couple of days later I  went to harvest the berries, and I caught a squirrel red-handed!!! Or blue-handed, as it were. I swear that little jerk had blue juice on his face and he gave me the finger as he slipped through the gaps in the fence.

 

My husband then put a wire fence and some boards in the back against the wooden fence (you can see the wide board on the left). That took care of the gaps by the ground, but the squirrels were still climbing up through the top gaps to get the berries. Last weekend, we just pulled the net and boards down. All the berries have been eaten, so what's the point in keeping them up?

As I write this post and reflect on everything, I can't help but feel a teeny tiny bit of admiration at their persistence. I wonder if their moms gave them "If at first you don't succeed, try again" speeches. I wonder if I would be so persistent in going after something I really want if someone kept putting up obstacles (and hoped I would die). Also, there's a McDonald's not too far from my neighborhood. Sometimes I smell that wonderful fried potato smell when I'm working in the garden. I've even seen birds flying by with fries in their beaks, and I've seen squirrels carrying brown things in their paws, probably buns or nuggets or hash browns. I am impressed that these critters would want to balance their diets with some healthy foods.

 So now that this is all out of my system, I'm just going to let it go....(until next year).