I went out into my vegetable garden this afternoon. My tomato plants are growing out of control, they’re pretty much taller than me now. They’re getting so big that I needed to add a single tall garden stake to a plant I had already put in a tomato cage — the plant has grown well over the top of the cape. So do I now need to cage my cages?? At this rate the tomato plants are going to take over the entire garden enclosure. Now if only those green tomatoes would ripen soon!
And I am annoyed — an animal has once again gotten into my bed of wildflower seeds and dug up all the sunflower seeds. And the little sprouts! And when I say “dug”, I mean 3 big holes in the bed, and there might have been an animal ass print too. I had been dumping cayenne pepper on top of the seeds, but I hadn’t been out to check the past two days because work had been so busy. And the animals must have noticed, because they wasted no time in ruining all my hard work!
Our neighbor planted two sunflower seeds in a pot months ago — it’s on their deck (which is low to the ground) and now has two huge sunflowers growing out of it and one of them just bloomed this week. It’s beautiful. And our neighborhood animals are not messing with it! Are they just afraid to go on the deck?
I’ve been really jealous about their sunflower plant, so two weeks ago I tossed two seeds and some soil into an empty pot and put it on our patio. I now have a little seedling growing. I’m afraid that the squirrels or birds or chipmunks or which ever species is the sunflower destroyers are going to notice it and drag it out of the pot like they have done to all the other seeds I have planted. How do they even smell them?? It’s like as soon as I plant the sunflowers, they are lining up ready for dinner.
If this sunflower survives on our patio and actually produces a sunflower, then I’m definitely going to stop planting them in the garden enclosure because it’s a waste of my time. Maybe our neighbors are on to something. And maybe I should just stick to tomato plants. And spinach!
Notes from a Self Quarantine 