Mud Man! lizards. Wear some gloves if that makes you feel more comfortable but know that most of the time critters are not out to get you. I’ve found some worm snakes under mulch but I have yet to find that pesky vole that puts all the holes in my garden. I won’t apologize for the times when my yard can get a little grown up in places. Once I had some bird seed that I
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Ya dk i n V al le y Magazine
let grow from messy birds. It turned out to be sorghum which has a really neat look. It was great for attracting those tiny birds that came to perch all over it to eat. I usually put a fence up around garden spaces to keep little feet from smashing all the plants. The funniest thing was watching pigeons try over and over to walk through the hog wire fencing and not being able to fit. They could’ve just flown up and over to get to the seeds but just couldn’t figure it out. Since we’re always out in the yard doing something, I prefer to pull weeds rather than spray. Many times over the years with a busy life, I’ve had some grasses get a little tall in the yard. As I’ve pulled I’ve often felt the prying eyes of a large child trying to be a tiger. Then the real play begins and we end up wrestling and laughing. Every summer I get a veggie garden going. I like to grow sweet potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, beans, giant sunflowers, and pumpkins. I let flowers come up in the middle of some of this and try to attract the natural predator bugs to come in to get the
damaging bugs. We get some really crazy orb weavers and trap door spiders that my son is terrified and fascinated by but it is fun to watch these capture critters. We often try to capture butterflies and my son got pretty good at capture and release. We often find praying mantis cases and hope we don’t miss hatching day as they are some of the cutest little perfect replicas of their mommas. My son and I have a standing agreement when it comes to any rotten or unwanted veggies…he gets them. Sometimes you just have to let them smash stuff! He says it isn’t quite summer until you get a good whiff of rotten, smashed tomato. So he uses all manner of hammers, shoes, bike tires and big wheels to smash. Then we sweep it up and put it in our heave it and leave it compost pile. We’ve made all kinds of clubhouses over the years. Big boxes are awesome. We’ve used bamboo and duct tape to make a teepee. I found a slide on Craig’s list for free that started us making a treehouse so it could be used. We let the kids decorate with spray paint. Who cares what it looks like when they have story continues on page 125
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