The one from last year, having not been nice and warm and inside at night and having to make do with the natural seasons, is playing catch up.
Grape Kool-aid got the first gray squirrel that attacked my Stella cherry on Wednesday to leave and not come back; then yesterday, a black squirrel tried and that time I Graped again and shook cinnamon on the limbs.
There has been no sign of a squirrel since. Which is great, because last year they were stripping those flowers just as fast as they opened. They only seem to do that with the cherries.
I wonder if the salmonella outbreak that has been affecting the birds has cut down the squirrel population, too. It seems like it.
Quite to my surprise I discovered the first pomegranate bud of the year. And while I was looking at it, I heard the loud cry of a large bird overhead that I didn’t turn around in time to see.
But there was a large feather on the ground a few steps behind me that most definitely did not come from a crow, where there had been none a moment before.
Even with the bird feeder down, even with the tall trees to either side of our property gone now, even with a new generation of Cooper’s hawk these last two years, it appears they still claim our yard as their own.
And that makes me wildly happy.
