The 2009 Garden & Squirrel Solution

As you may or may not know, this crazy inflated Monkey enjoys partying, girls, bananas, girls, watching MTV reality shows, girls, and yes, gardening. In the midst of all the other exciting stuff going on, I forgot to mention that I have a bunch of veggies growing once again for the 2009 summer season. Last year saw several of the leafy green vegetable plants such as broccoli and spinach get eaten by rodents or probably deer. This time around I set up a special area up on a hill with a protective fence around it. We bought fence and a bunch of the other necessary gardening stuff at the local Lowes store, and now it actually seems to be a real garden since nothing's able to eat away at the plants. Anyways, this year's crops include: cucumber, squash, green pepper, broccoli, tomato, zucchini, and due to a mixup at the Lowes, Okra. Okra's apparently like grits which are a treat in the south. The Okra (rhymes with Oprah) got planted up on a hill in the hopes the deer would eat that one, because everyone tells me Okra is yucky, although one of the relatives says it tastes great fried (what doesn't?) I'll keep you all updated on how the veggie situation goes, but as of right now the cucumber/squash seem to have flowers, there's two small tomatoes budding and then a green pepper growing nicely by itself.

That brings me to another interesting nature situation, since I mentioned preventing critters from getting into my garden. We've got a bird feeder set up right outside our front kitchen window to provide entertainment and bird-viewing. The birds seem to love it there as we see everything from cardinals to bluebirds and woodpeckers stopping by for food. At times they even like to let us know when the container needs to be refilled. Unfortunately, it's not just the birds who seem to be munching away on the birdseed. It's those rodents with the big bushy tails filling their fat bellies up, and constantly driving the family dog bonkers. That at times can be entertaining, as just the other day I saw 3 squirrels all together going after the bird food in the feeder and down below. So needless to say we are looking to prevent squirrels from invading the feeder. I started reading up on solutions and learned about these devices called squirrel baffles. They're dome shaped-thingies that you attach to the feeder that prevent squirrels from climbing the pole or going onto the feeder. Pretty nifty and less mean of an apprach, because the next solutions are putting hot cayenne pepper into the birdseed or the alpha male says he's going to shoot the squirrels with a BB Gun...Just giving you squirrels fair warning!