Today, I took out some kitchen scraps, and first thing I notice is this nice layer of loose soil all over the right most empty compost bin floor. "What the...?" -- then I see it. A groundHOG hole where all the dirt had come from. I tried filling the hole with water from the hose I was holding, but wow the soil is REALLY nice there under the crabapple tree. It wouldn't fill up.
I rolled an old tree stump in front of the hole to block it, and crammed all the gaps with sticks and branches from the woodpile.
...
Then I started watering my container plants. All the vacationing plants and some tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants that never got planted languishing in their small containers.... Then I turned around and started watering the tomatoes that I did plant in larger containers... And I see something behind me out of the corner of my eye....
!!!AN OPOSSUM AMBLING PAST, NOT 3 FEET BEHIND ME!!!
I was so flabbergasted I didn't know what to do, then pointed the watering wand with gentle shower rose I was holding and turned up the pressure -- not that it sprays at all that's the whole point of the thing, but I did start to get it wet -- and it did not go any faster but turned its head in an irritated manner and silently snarled at me. I was really completely taken off guard and followed it while continuing to ineffectually "water" it with my wand
I was powerless as I watched it make it's way behind the central air conditioning unit and into the shrubbery behind.
Later when I came back to the picnic table I realized several containers are on their sides -- I had not noticed.... Do you think the opossum was THERE when I watered the plants? I can't even think where it had come from. I haven't seen opossums around here for years, not even with the small woods behind our house.
...
The thing of it is, last week we discovered that yellow jackets had come back and were nesting in some old stumps that we had on our driveway. The guys sprayed the heck out of it, then managed to move it under a tree in the front yard away from the driveway and sidewalk, where we're just going to leave them until frost to get rid of them. I'm hanging home made yellow jacket traps from the tree branches in hopes of reducing their numbers. I looked up possible predators for yellow jackets, and skunks and opossums came up....
(I was thinking we DON'T want skunks... Too badwe don't have any opossums around....)The a/c unit shrubbery where it hid is convenient to the garden gate where I see something has been getting under, and the tree with the yellow jacket stump is right outside it....
...but I found two near ripe tomatoes with bite marks and one almost entire tomato that had been eaten -- just hanging by the stem and top. Did the opossum do that, or was it the grounHOG? We have near 100°F heat wave for the rest of the week. I fear for my tomatoes....
What are typical opossum damage to the garden?
wdfw.wa.gov/living/opossums.html
I did trade digging potatoes for planting those root bound plants though, but I told myself it's probably better to plant them tomorrow when I can water and then it's supposed to rain on Sat.
