Destruction

I used to think squirrels were cute.  However, these ears of corn that are pictured, are the only ears of corn that I got this summer.  Why?  I had planted several rows of corn back in cold March and some more in April - which the malicious little rats with bushy tails quickly attacked and dug up.  The plants got nice and tall but one by one they disappeared at the hands of those nasty creatures in my yard. For a while, the corn bed had a fence around it, but part of the fence was a cast off metal one and my husband noted that the squirrels could sit on the top and munch as the ears were at that level.  So we took the fence down.  Bad mistake. The next day - after I picked these four - the rest of the bed was destroyed.

Most of my gardening life is centered around trying to fend of various animals who are intent on devouring my food.  I throw out scraps plenty of times but I suppose they are not enamored of those even though the food quickly disappears.  No, if they can get into my garden, they love to nibble most anything that I have planted.  I did resort to shrouding my fruiting bushes with netting to protect the berries from the birds, and my vegetable garden is surrounded by construction fencing that is stapled to wooden stakes around the beds so that the groundhogs won't get in under the fence. But this year's corn was kind of open until we put the makeshift fencing up. Next year we plan to cover it completely in either netting or a thin row cover.

The squirrels are the bane of my gardening life.  They also dig in the flower gardens, as well as flower pots.  I have a large planter of day lilies and after I had added some bulbs in it, huge chunks of dirt, along with the new bulbs were missing shortly thereafter.  Of course they get at my bird feeders and almost completely destroyed one that was made of wood.  They dug up my tulip bulbs despite my little piles of small logs on top of the newly planted items.  Short of getting a gun I am kind of at my wit's end. I may just end up posting recipes for squirrel at some point.