Voles?

A young leek chewed below ground in my front raised bed was the first sign.  The second was a wilting red-veined sorrel in the same bed.  Examined, the roots had been nipped off in a straight line.

Remarkable.

Who would have thought that a vole (presumably) would have escaped all of the neighborhood cats to burrow into my raised bed, and eat a leek and (very sour) sorrel roots?

Maybe that's what's happened to my seeds/seedlings in that bed (I've sowed climbing squash and beans, and there's been limited evidence of seedlings, at least so far).

OK, I'm a wildlife-friendly gardener, but voles in my vegetables, and a bear flattening the perennial leeks down below, along with the woodchuck that now seems to be creeping up from the ravine and nipping on the tomatoes!  Not normally a woodchuck favorite.

Hhrmph.

Gardening for nature

I've been gardening for nature and encouraging others to do so for over three decades, now that I'm thinking about it.  Hmm.  It's good work and I'm glad to have had the opportunity to do so.

Doing another program tomorrow morning has me musing --

I thoroughly updated my presentation to suit Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians, where I now live, but not without a bit of wistfulness for our old garden in the Piedmont, too, as I deleted images that I'd talked about for a long time. 

I'm not sure that the stewardship and care of planting has been particularly appreciated by the new "owners" of the site, just from a remark or two that came our way.

Glad to come home (late August, 2015)

But, whatever, gardens and landscapes change, and that's the story.

How do we, however ephemerally, change the places where we live for the better?  My gardening companion and I plant natives, plants that work for a living, and ones that have great meaning.  Those have been our screens, and my talking points over the years.

So I'm glad to look back at the stewardship that we've done, too, in our landscapes.