Uh-oh
Tuesday February 09th 2016, 12:00 am
Filed under: Garden,Wildlife

I walked around the yard this evening, taking in the slow awakening that makes the whole winter thing worth it.

My Tropic Snow peach. As I was trying to get just the right angle with my phone, a hummingbird dashed right in front of me and dove into the flower at the top branch back there, laughing and dancing away when I got over my startle and tried to get it into the next shot.

The August Pride peach was all small green buds yesterday.

And way over here… ohmygoodness, clear signs of a gopher attack (am I right?) on the pear tree’s roots with quite a scoop of ground dug out near the trunk on one side and some gone from the other side, too. I dumped a load of moist topsoil on top, tamped it down again and again with my shoe, knowing the animal had to have retreated far into its burrow at my coming, and then I put a lot of cinnamon over the top. I know squirrels hate the smell and gophers are rodents too so that should help, right?

I have a few gopher plants standing guard halfway across the yard from there, volunteers and strays of last year, but they’re biennials so I don’t have any seeds yet to spread the love to where I need it–now those would be roots those critters would avoid. I was planning on doing so for my cherry trees at the far end of the yard because they’re prime targets. I didn’t know pear trees were. Maybe the thing just went for what it could reach first after digging under the fence. Maybe it dug under the fence to get away after the neighbors cut a tree down.

Looks like I’m going to have to go find me some more gopher plants somewhere, quick. 


2 Comments so far
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I never heard of gopher plants. What are they?

Comment by Jody 02.09.16 @ 5:09 am

so sorry

Comment by Sherry in Idaho 02.09.16 @ 7:57 am



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