Re: GWL groundhogs, rats and city slickers

**R* M* M* <r*@comcast.net>**

This all reminds me of how while I like nature in my garden...I'm constantly beating it back and not yet done this season. Walnuts and hazel nuts have sprouted everywhere,planted by squirrels. Wild shrubs threaten to take over. We have a neighborhood herd of deer that dine in every garden, raccoon populations are on the rebound and make water gardening nigh impossible. We try to encourage  more songbirds but my dear neighbor feeds crows ever morning and while it's interesting to see the formation as they fly, there numbers seem out of balance. Rats, finally we all admitted we had rats and traced part of the problem to the same neighbor who was feeding raccoons...stopping that really helped. Groups of wild turkeys are seen waddling down the street. They're a non-indigenous bird introduced by the game commission for hunters,. We are involuntarily developing Doug Tallamy's zones but not sure I want to go totally native. Food gardening is my bread and butter and the garden is my 
 lab and studio. 
This is not to say there aren't many aspects of this primal tussle I do enjoy such as hearing an owl at night and knowing here is a place where it can live well.
Rose Marie
Nichols Garden Nursery
www.nicholsgardennursery.com
On Jun 20, 2012, at 8:11 AM, Judy Lowe wrote:

> This groundhog discussion is the most entertaining thread we've had in a long time! :-)
> 
> 
> I was especially interested when the subject of rats came up. When I lived in Boston (Back  Bay area; a block from Symphony Hall), rats were a huge problem; they were about the size of squirrels. The first years we lived in our rowhouse, we had no problem with them being destructive to plants. (I grew everything from roses and shrubs to herbs and tomatoes in big containers.) But then a rat family (colony?) moved in next door where the young couple built a foot-high raised wooden platform behind their rowhouse (over 1870s brick yet), and the rats made a home underneath. The last two years we were in Boston, they ate everything from seedlings to clematis blooms. They were somewhat deterred by thorny rosebush prunings stuck thickly around the edge of the pots. 
> 
> But talking about rats in your garden was always a "yuck" to others, so I kept quiet about them (most of the time) and listened to suburbanites' deer tales.
> 
> As to the city residents moving to the country, I, too, get tickled that so often they destroy the very things that appealed to them about the country. When we lived in Tennessee, I disliked the dusk-to-dawn lights that were always installed by these folks when they moved to our vicinity. Made it hard to see the stars at night.
> 
> Judy Lowe

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