Welcome to our New New Blog!

  • Published: Mar 3, 2021
  • Written by C Barton
  • Topics:
Welcome to our New New Blog!

Congratulations, gentle reader (ok I was bored by Bridgerton but love Julie Andrews’ accent), if you have made it this far, then you have won the dubious honor of being one of the first readers (out of what will be MILLIONS I’m sure) of the Lots of Plants new blog -----TODAY IN RUDE NATURE.

 

Why is Nature rude, you may ask? Well I personally think Nature is AWESOME and abundantly patient, strong, and resilient. Some think, however, it has the AUDACITY to get in our way and make our lives tough as we build, grow, pave, propel and really just try to make our space better for US, I mean, come on!

 

I digress in a judgmental fashion—my apologies.

 

TODAY IN RUDE NATURE is a space to muse upon cool things that we (by that I mean ME) come across in our interactions with plants, growing, landscaping, etc, but also to ask and answer questions related to these topics and many more. Yes, we will talk about the basics like, “How do I plant this thing I just got?” “How do I NOT kill this plant?” “How much water does this need?” and so forth. Please send in those questions as they pop into your heads. But first, let’s start with a story.

 

Crisscross applesauce put your listening ears on, I’m gonna tell about a tragic time that recently befell my garden. A time plagued by darkness and mystery and mud and weird random raised dirt piles. It was a time I never want to experience again. A time that I call….the NANDINAPOCALYPSE. Put your seatbelt on gentle reader.

 

Some of you, upon looking at NANDINAPOCALYPSE (yes I made up that word myself thank you) might be happy that an apocalypse struck my nandina. I mean, nandina can be a pain if you have the stupid spreading type that eats up huge swaths of land. But MY nandina were the cool, specially-developed nandina varieties that I scored from the 50% off shelves at my hardware store. They were half dead, but I was so excited to get two Flirt Nandina, and some unlabeled ones that look like Obsession Nandina. My luck they are actually the stupid spreading type.

 

Before I go further, you need to know something about me. I LOVE plants, but I am a cheap gardener. I also have the gift of patience, so I don’t mind getting something imperfect and taking the time to have it become something lovely. It is this philosophy that was the basis of what I call my Orphan Garden.

 

My Orphan Garden is a hodge-podgy, multi-tiered garden I built a few years ago from retaining wall block I got from some lady throwing it away. I had this annoying slope in my hell-strip part of the front yard that I hated to mow that is situated outside my fence and I thought—here we go!—a retaining wall garden! So I learned how to use a line level and built this multi-tiered thing, filled it with great dirt and started planting it with leftover, forgotten plants I had either found on discount or removed from landscape jobs where they were no longer wanted. This would have been the fourth year of my Orphan Garden and THIS YEAR was destined to be the BEST year so far. The evergreens were nice and full, the Carolina jasmine was

popping, the Drift roses were full, the Flirt nandina had the most beautiful red color in the fall! HOORAY FOR RUDE NATURE! And then.

 

I had recently noticed weird little dirt piles popping up in the front yard. I also had noticed that my dog Tilley (aka Pretty Girl, Tilley Willy, Tilley Vanilli), over the course of a week had been obsessing about these little dirt piles in the front yard. By obsessing I mean she was digging intently up near the fence and sticking her head into the ground up to her eyeballs and sniffing deeply, inhaling dirt and debris in the process, and then sneezing herself backwards out of the hole. She did this over days and days, creating cavernous trenches in my yard and mud all over my house. This did not make me smile, gentle reader. She had continued this behavior for like ten days straight, but then one day, it stopped. Her digging stopped. The obsessing stopped. The weird piles of dirt that had been rising mysteriously from below stopped. I said finally! Without thinking further, I filled in the caverns with the spare dirt I keep in my driveway and went about the mundane tasks I had that day, like figuring out why I keep spare dirt in the driveway. I was walking across the lawn looking at the ground as I usually do and almost stepped on a slimy, shiny loaf-like thing about the size of a fat snacking sausage. What the??? Not dog poop, so I picked it up (because why not?) and realized it was what looked like a mole. But maybe it was a vole. I don’t know the difference, but it was decidedly dead. I mourned its death briefly and realized that given the location I found it, surrounded by the cavernous carnage of my front yard, this was probably what Tilley Vanilli had been so passionately pursuing.

 

A few days later, I noticed something in the Orphan Garden.

 

There had been a break in the punishing winter weather and I got to work outside. I was pruning in my Orphan Garden when I noticed one of my lovely nandina with all its glorious fall color was leaning sideways. Weird. As I went to straighten it, it came right out of the ground. It had been chewed clean off at the base of the plant where the trunk meets the roots, bright yellow plant flesh gleaming. Man was I MAD! And confused. I then realized that EVERY SINGLE NANDINA was falling over, leaning ridiculously down the sloping garden. I tugged on each one and you guessed it, every single one came straight outta the ground, some with roots, some just a sad trunk nub. What did this???

 

I’m sure you remember, gentle reader, that my Orphan Garden is in the hell-strip part of my front yard and it backs up to the fence, which separates the Orphan Garden from my main front yard—the place where Tilley spends most of her time when she’s not sleeping on my couch or digging up my yard. All of the weird dirt piles I had seen were not only in the Orphan Garden, but also went under the fence into my main front yard, precisely where Tilley had been so tirelessly digging, and PRECISELY where I had found the dead Slimy Sausage Vole/Mole. Tilley is not a “digging” dog but she has a high prey drive, often intensely focused on small hairy ground creatures. I put it together that all this time she was probably hunting the Slimy Sausage Vole/Mole! I also figured that the Vole/Mole most likely initiated the

NANDINAPOCALYPSE. I guess those little blind dudes really like nandina flesh. Who knows why, but I think they do.

 

So, gentle reader, even though I think it was responsible for the truncation and likely future demise of every single nandina in the Orphan Garden, I have forgiven the Slimy Sausage Vole/Mole, telling him/her that I hope he/she liked the last meal of tasty nandina flesh. I hope it was worth it. And I replanted every nandina in the ground, packing them in tight, and said a little blessing that they may live. Maybe wrapping their tasty root balls in chicken wire would help them survive? Not sure, but I know that if they don’t, it will be a new opportunity. And future Rude Nature Slimy Sausage Vole/Moles need to get the message Tilley Vanilli sent so clearly.

 

Until next time, gentle reader.

 

Today In Rude Nature

By Carrie B


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