Friday, August 10, 2007

Messing With Nature...


Gardening is man's feeble, and in the end futile, attempt to manage nature; to bring order to a wayward natural world that we really barely understand. It doesn't help when the garden sheperd also has an obsessive personality... take garden paths. The front entry path to our garden had been built with quite a bit of effort and time, and it was a perfectly fine path, but then the moles came. In making flower beds in the woods, I dug out the clay soil and replaced it with loose compost; wonderful for little plants, but I hadn't realized it was like building swimming pools for every mole in the neighborhood... they can plow around in the loose soil like little motorboats, eating the fat worms that proliferate in the rich soil, popping small plants out of the ground like so many corks out of bottles. This damaging intrusion into my perfect garden world is, of course, totally unacceptable, requiring a response; the more complicated and time consuming the plan is, the better... I am the Wile E. Coyote of gardening. Therefore, as I've related before, I've been digging a two foot deep trench around the whole garden, and placing a thick plastic mole barrier in the trench, then filling it back in... I just ran one of these trenches up this path, ripped off the old ground cloth, replaced all the bark on the path, and reset the limestone edging.
Peace has again returned to our garden, but it's an illusion... an uneasy and transient truce with a world of weeds and critters that I'm quite convinced have meetings at night planning their next foray into our little Eden on the hill.
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Comments:
That is so beautiful ... I can see why you'd want to make sure those little moles didn't tear it up.

LOL ... mole barrier. Oh what work, but it looks so lovely.
 
You certainly are dedicated! I'm just getting myself psyched up to put in rabbit fencing. I think I'll be more psyched when the temperatures finally get below 90 degrees . . . .
 
Oh, yeah, they are meeting, and plotting and scheming, but hopefully they won't be able to figure out a way around your barrier.

Reminds me of the movie, I think it is called "Over the Hedge"?

Carol at May Dreams Gardens
 
How old did you say you were? I get tired just reading about all the effort you've gone to. It's hard to believe you're a retired doctor. You'll either live to be 100 or conk out in the garden, shovel in hand.
 
Olivia... moles really are destructive when you are growing lots of little, shallow rooted plants like primroses.

Tracy... I know what you mean; I just don't have any enthusiasm to work in the garden when it's 90.

Carol... I haven't seen that movie, but I do find the deer here are getting so bold, it's quite incredible.

Kathy... well, let's just say I'll be on medicare next year when I probably conk out. I actually spend twice as much time on the woodland nature preserve I manage than I do on the garden (I'm signing off to go over there right now to cut brush before the temperature gets into the 90s).

don
 
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