True stories with a twist!

Posts tagged ‘TOMATO PLANT’

RARE BIRDIES ON A BRANCH

IMG_0779   I couldn’t believe my eyes. This afternoon, as I was relaxing in my back yard I glanced up and there they were. Look carefully and you will see them too; they’re so beautifully camouflaged that it’s hard to make them out. Can you see the purple bush in the background on the right side of the photo? A little to the left of that purple flower and a tiny bit upward you can see what I saw. Two tiny green finches sitting on the tomato plant stem.

Wow; a rare sighting. we said to each other. Where did they come from? Could they have escaped from a neighbor’s home cage? Have they migrated here from a foreign rain forest where they were never before seen by humans? Neither of us had ever heard of  green finches. You can barely make out their shape. I had to get this picture or nobody would believe me.

So I tried to move nearer without scaring them away. I wanted to get a closer shot.

Is this any clearer? Can you see those little green birds on the tomato  branch?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         They’re sitting on the right stem.  This was intoxicating! So far I had gotten two photographs of them and they were not skittish; I had not frightened them away.       I zoomed in so close that I saw that what looked like a purple bush were blooms from a hosta.     And they weren’t purple; they were white.  I’ll try a really close shot this time.

So I did. As I got closer I discovered that Mother Nature  had played her little joke on me.

There were no green finches sitting on a tomato bush. All  there was were two tomato leaves sticking straight up in the air, looking all the world like birds: instead of leaves.

How disappointing! Sorry for playing this joke on you, but I had to share

this funny mis-sighting!IMG_0778

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ADORABLE CHIPMUNKS???

Don’t tell me that chipmunks are cute.

They are totally irritating to me. There’s nothing cute about them. They’ve robbed me of my greatest summer pleasure, growing a vegetable garden. Those little thieves destroy the vegetables just at the moment they’re ripe, taking one bite and leaving the leftovers for me to fantasize and dream about.

And they burrow holes all over the property, causing the ground to collapse in the lawn. If anyone steps on an area of grass hiding an underground tunnel they could trip, fall, and imagine they’re in a Viet Cong tunnel dug somewhere near Hanoi.

Chipmunks relocate wood chips and garden mulch from under trees and shrubs to their preferred spots in mid-driveway. They create the peacetime equivalent of a deadly road bomb.

I wish there were some way to get rid of those little beasts, I complain to myself, as I think about planting a vegetable garden this summer. I have diabolical, even murderous thoughts towards them.

I see large birds flying overhead and wonder: “Do turkey hawks eat chipmunks? Why don’t they swoop down and grab and gobble a few?”

I decide to try a new system to deter the creatures from eating my plants: bird netting. The kind of netting used to protect berries and grapes from birds’ marauding.

I plant one single tomato plant, “Sweet 100,” in a large container and wrap the container with bird netting. Now let’s see who will outsmart whom.

Yesterday afternoon I hear my husband shriek “Come out here right away.” I rush outside, and there, near my “Sweet 100”, was my husband with a pathetic sight. He held a chipmunk that he had cut free from the netting around the Sweet 100, wrapped in bird netting. It had been trying to climb up and fetch an afternoon snack when it got hopelessly tangled. The animal was completely immobilized. “Grab some gardening gloves and help me,” he said. The poor chipmunk was frozen with fear and unable to move a whisker (do chipmunks have whiskers?).

I held him still, while my husband cut the netting from all around his body. The last batch was under his neck, choking him. That too was carefully snipped away. The animal, now free, quickly ran off to hide and recover under some blue hydrangeas.

As a reward for our good deed, we are blessed with a “rescue” chipmunk this summer, aiding and abetting his cohorts in the destruction our garden.

So now instead of growing my own vegetables I support the local farmers and buy our fresh produce at the farmers’ market. I wonder what they do with THEIR chipmunks?

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