The bird feeder adventures

When we decided to put up a bird feeder we designed it to be far away from any branch and high enough off the ground. We hoped that this would be enough to keep the Squirrels at bay. We also designed it as a pulley-cable-hook system with a very thin cable hoping it wouldn't give them enough of a foot hold. But they are smart creatures and up for the challenge.

As soon as the bird feeder went up, the Squirrels were all over it. Within a few hours, they had mastered the subtle trick of getting on to the feeder. They seemed to have taken some cliff hanging lessons from Sly Stallone.

Our first step was to mix in some cayenne powder with the seeds. This didn't seem to bother them one bit. In fact they seem to enjoy the added spice and kick and were coming back for more. We then installed a squirrel baffle that we rigged using a cheap metal salad tray that was picked up from Smart-n-Final.

That has seemed to do the trick for the last few days enough to "baffle" them. But the Squirrels are content eating the scraps the birds drop as they feed.

Our very own Chupacabra

We have had a long tumultuous history with animals of all kinds in this house. Over the years, it has gotten more and more challenging.

Summer of 2011, we had to deal with mysterious cracks in the ground. These ruined the look of the landscape, but was not causing much trouble.

A couple of props were added to the landscape, knowing fully well that they wouldn't be helpful ;). But a girls got to have her retail therapy.

Then came the attack on the vegetables. This we suspect was the squirrels that had inhabited this place all along but had mysteriously developed a love for vegetables.

Then some nasty things started happening over the fall. Squirrels (or racoons) started chewing up our drip irrigation heads and the elbows in random spots. We ended up with 350$ water bills and the slugs having a party !

But the worst was yet to come. Over the winter of 2011 the cracks in the garden became more rampant, the soil would just cave in beneath your foot and the mounds started appearing everywhere

We are still trying to do damage control and figure out a longer term fix to this issue

More raised beds

You would think we are crazy to be building more planter beds. Well, maybe we are !

Four massive 12*3 foot beds are replacing 3 of the Gen1 raised beds we had here and expanding the planting area.

It is proving to be a really massive project. Just leveling the boxes took almost a full day. Then the hardware cloth that had to be custom fit took away another entire day. We still have not gotten to filling up these boxes with our miracle soil+compost combo, which we assume will take 2 full days for our trusted garden handyman Anthonio.

This has also become a pretty expensive project with the lumber costing over $300, the 10 cubic yards of compost costing around $300 as well, the hardware cloth, the lag screws and the rest adding up to around $500 and the many days of labor. Now there goes the budget for a Hawaii vacation !

Borage

One of the most tantalizing flowers in our 2010 vegetable garden was Borage.

They attracted lots of pollinators and the flower was always the center of a lot of activity.

We pulled out most parts of the plant because I made the mistake of planting them in our vegetable beds. They grow to monstrous proportions and were making it difficult to harvest the Eggplants that were in the same bed.

Now in Spring I see that they have voluntarily re-seeded in the same beds and also spread themselves to nearby areas.