Someone decided that January 21 should be be squirrel appreciation day. For the past week I received many cute squirrel related photos, advice on how to pamper them and assorted fodder touting how wonderful these little guys are.

You must be kidding I say. Don’t be fooled people! Squirrels are out to rule the world. They are living dinosaurs and quite smug about this, letting humans know that they were fully evolved while we were just crawling out of the primordial sludge. My habitat garden is a war zone with the squirrels and I am sure if they had thumbs, they would win. Squirrels are rascals in cute packages. They are smart, cunning critters with no respect for anything. In my garden they make a mess and laugh as I shake my fist at them. It’s a constant battle to keep them out of my bird feeders as they figure out each new baffle, they steal tomatoes, they pull all of the blossoms off my shrubs and every spring when I first turn on my drip irrigation system I need to fix all of the fountains they have created by chewing holes in my line.

The latest destruction is the squirrels have been chewing up my plant tags. Thanks, guys. Those tags, while they aren’t hard to make, do take effort. And they are metal! Why would a squirrel want to chew metal? I have a lot of plant tags…and they have chewed most of them.


Did these taste good? No. They did not taste good. But still they chew them up.


And look, a freshly chewed tag. More to come I am sure.

So the squirrels and I will continue to battle and mutually shake our fists at each other. I protest that they have their own special day where I’m supposed to appreciate them. Of course they think that this is a hoot and demand to be celebrated, so maybe I’ll refrain from fist shaking for a single day. Maybe not.

If interested in plant labels: The plant tags are Paw Paw Everlast E Type using a Brother PT 2700 printer with Brother TZ251 Black on White P-Touch Tape. I bought both the printer and tape on Amazon, which was considerably less expensive than other stores. I’ve been very happy with the system. Except for the squirrel part.

Well I screwed up.  Two years ago, after I had cleared out the property and had a pitiful looking yard, I started planting. The first thing to go in was a hedge of beautyberry spp. Callicarpa americana with ninebark Diablo Physocarpus opulifolius behind it. It’s on a woodland edge and just perfect. I thought, “how pretty. The light color leaves of the beautyberry will really set off that wonderful wine color of the Diablo. It will provide food for bees and birds and the HOA will like it. Win win in a habitat garden.” Yes the HOA is important to me. I care more than they do, they are pretty casual, but I am all about showing that a naive habitat garden can be attractive.

I did my planting, made tags, ran my drip irrigation to my new hedge and finally had some small spot that was “landscaped”.

Except my beautyberry was not Callicarpa americana, it was Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Issai’. I didn’t find this out until later (mis-mark at the nursery, and it was winter. Forgive me, no leaves). Anyhow, I wasn’t happy to find out that I had Japanese Beautyberry in my yard. I planted it for the birds to eat the berries after all, that means those Japanese berries will end up in the woods. And the birds did eat the berries.

I didn’t pull it up. I made excuses. I was so wanting anything to look decent in my barren yard that I put it in the back of my head. As native gardeners know, you have to mail order just about everything and it’s rare you can buy an actual plant in a nursery. I had purchased the Callicarpa dichotoma ‘Issai’ at a nursery and they were about the only shrub I had that wasn’t very small. These actually had some size to them. It was like I had an honest to goodness shrub instead of a line of twigs. And lets face it, ‘Issai’ is attractive with it’s mauve lined leaves.

But I hated it. I didn’t like it when it berried, feeling like I was adding more invasives to the woodlands with those hundreds of tiny seeds and it’s right in the front of my house so was a small thorn in my side every time I drove in.

Then the other day I was speaking to a nurseryman, Andy Kinsey over at Kinsey Family Tree Farm Plant Nursery (NOT the same nursery with the mis-marked plants), and he mentioned that he had some ‘Issai’ but he will never grow it again. When I asked why, he told me that it spread all over the place and that he even had some in his own yard but took it out. Okay. It spread all over the place. Not good. Inwardly I cringed, knowing that I was going to have to go home and get rid of my own ‘Issai’. What’s the point of removing all of the Chinese privet and Japanese honeysuckle only to plant an equally wretched replacement? Plus I’d have to give up my smug rights for not having invasive plants on my property. We can’t have that. I don’t get to smug very often so I’m keeping what I’ve got.

Next week the weather is supposed to be nice so I’ll be out there tearing out a hedge that had finally reached it’s established year. I’ll be going back to the nurseryman and buying out his Callicarpa americana to replace the torn out plants. If only I had listened to myself and just took a loss on the money and time spent on the ‘Issai’ hedge two years ago, I would have a group of Callicarpa americana shrubs hitting their stride this year.

Nope. I screwed up so I’ll start over.

Find out more about ninebark Physocarpus opulifolius Diablo, which is a very nice plant, over at Missouri Botanical Garden’s Kemper Center, and beautyberry spp. Callicarpa americana over at Daves.

VMCHHPYAX8UG The Georgia Native Plant Society’s Symposium 2011 will be held February 19th 2011. The topic is Native Gardening in the Southeast wit speakers:

“Nurturing Gardens Inspired by Nature” – Rick Lewandowski

“Native Plants and Transportation Projects in Georgia: Constraints and Opportunities” – Jamie Collazo

“Showy Native Woodies” – Dick Bir

“Teaming with Microbes: The Subterranean Life of the Soil Food Web” – Duane Marcus

“Invasive Species: Making a Difference in Your Back Yard” – Karan Rawlins

For more on this event, please see Georgia Native Plant Society’s Symposium 2011. I have attended their events before and they are worthwhile! There will be vendors selling native plants as well.

The first time I saw Andrew Wyeth’s Witches Broom I though, “Well geeze, there I am.”

Wyeth had a habit of painting friends and neighbors, and it’s highly likely the woman in the work is a neighbor. Once upon a time I knew the story behind the model but I’ve forgotten the details. All the same, she’s a perfect modern “witch” or at least the strange lady down the road everyone avoids.

Wyeth was a master storyteller. It’s always layers of stories within stories.

She’s not a witch. She’s just a person content in her own company, with an affinity to the land. Sometimes I feel like her – I may come off as strange, I don’t have a lot in common with the other women my age and I am perfectly content to wander about and get engrossed in the tiny details of the outdoors. I’ve had people ask me (gently) what exactly am I doing? Looking for caterpillar eggs of course, doesn’t everyone?

I think many gardeners can feel like this. We all have an obsessive interest in the smallest bud, mentally block out the world and occasionally come up for air to realize, “whoops. I need to participate in this society thing.”

If you admire bats the Bat House project is a must visit. It was a competition held in London to design a functional, artistic large scale bat house. Check out their page on Winners listed under Competition. There are some amazing designs! I just wish the images were larger so that I could get a better look.

Mr Jorgen Tandberg and Ms Yo Murata won the overall competition with the design in the photograph. Details are posted on the bat House Project site. It’s amazing! Congratulations to them and thank you for creating something so beautiful which shares space with wildlife.

I’m still trying to come up with some deco pattern to make a similar, much smaller layered designed bat house. The possibilities are endless.

From the site:

The Project highlights the potential for architects, builders, home-owners and conservationists to work together to produce wildlife-friendly building design. It connects the worlds of art and ecology to encourage public engagement with ecology issues. The Project builds on the Mayor of London’s policies to raise awareness of urban biodiversity and to support the survival of London’s ten bat species.