Garden

I harbor mixed emotions about squirrels. On the one hand, they are industrious, persistent, and agile high wire artists who sometimes meet an unfortunate yet most likely spectacular demise by short-circuiting a transformer and rendering entire neighborhoods powerless. On the other hand, they bury things in the wrong places, like in our raised garden beds. They burrow and dig (well, more digging than burrowing) in search of their stash of acorns and black walnuts, and in the process lay waste to large sections of perfectly good rows of spinach. I’ve pondered various courses of action: build a wall, post a guard, erect a No Trespassing sign. I’m aware of their prowess when it comes to bird feeders. So currently I have no plans to do anything, hoping this will be a short-lived battle of attrition- that their search for winter’s storehouse will move elsewhere. Shortly.

In the meantime, our attention turns to straw bale gardening. After flipping one of the bales over, I noticed the beginnings of some sort of bee’s nest (?), surprisingly intact and sort of perfect. Took my mind off the squirrels.