Design

We've had our eyes on the brush pile in the way back of the yard this spring (home of a large woodchuck), but so far the garden has been spared from woodchuck foraging, probably because of the tender young grass shoots everywhere. Returning home after a weekend away, my first inclination is to make the rounds to check on plants (does anything need watering, how are the transplants I shoved in the hay bales just before leaving doing, etc.). All looked good, and I was harvesting snow peas in the satellite garden, when I looked behind me. On the bed closest to the shrub border, hunkered down among the eggplants was an small baby woodchuck being perfectly still. Surprised by its stillness and small size (it was about a third as large as an adult), it took me a moment or two to move towards it. Then, of course, it scuttled off towards Mom (I suppose) and their burrow in the brush pile. The youngster's tail was nothing like an adult's, being a spiky sparse brush-like thing. Ch...

My gardening companion reported that he saw woodchuck holes galore along the railroad tracks behind our eye doctor's office this afternoon. The kudzu is leafless, so the burrows are visible. He said it reminded him of Matera (and the cave dwellings) in southern Italy. Hmm, I'm sure that they're not that prominent, but I'll have to go look! He thinks they like the young kudzu shoots as they leaf out later in the spring. We'll see.