This was actually really hard on me, unexpectedly. Reaching up and over is not a movement my bad collarbone does well, but little by little, I got it done.
Wife helping me!
My wife helped me, but she’s not much better off than I am. However, with the two of us, we got it done.
Close up of the half inch hardware cloth.
The hardware cloth was also a bit tricky. It will cut you easily, and I shredded my work gloves working with it. Each session of wrapping the garden cage left me with a lot of cuts and scratches.
Front gate.
I repaired the front door with a gate repair kit to it so it didn’t sag anymore. I left about a foot free on the top of the gate in hopes that pollinators would go in there. If the squirrels find it, it will be a simple matter of covering it too.
I also used a brick border where the hardware cloth came down to the ground. The bricks sit on top of a bit of hardware cloth that is tucked under them to keep the squirrels from digging under.
I used some wire to literally sew the panels on, and that worked really well. I have been keeping watch on the beds and not a single new hole has been dug since I did this.
I feel bad because most of the season is gone, but I figure that is one of the things that is cool with owning your own house. I will prep the beds, and fill them with more dirt, and be ready for next spring.
I might even have enough time to build a cage for a new external, strawberry bed by then.
The only things that survived from last year are the parsley and the strawberries. I was pleased I at least get the strawberries. Oh, and the mint and rhubarb outside the cage. They did remarkably well.
I feel really good about this because if this works, then it’s a one and done. I can then concentrate on planting my plants.
Although exhausting, it was nice to get this done. Here’s hoping I have stopped the squirrel incursion.
Well, not much is getting done. I might miss this season for gardening. After surgery I had a lot of recovery time, then I had to work on getting my garden cage squirrel-proofed, and that is a lot to do.
I haven’t even tried to plant without these protections in place because the squirrels are literally digging up my beds constantly. It’s never ending.
My garden plan is to finish the hoop house, and see if I can put some late crops in. Then slowly turn to my other beds. I have a new strawberry bed I need to cage up, as well as a sunflower, flower bed and herb beds that needs caged.
I have about 3/4 of my hoop house covered but it’s slow going. I just take a long time to heal, and my recovery from general anesthetic along with my work obligations have been a lot.
I am wrapping 1/2″ hardware cloth over the entire thing. I am using bricks to weigh down the ends of it, so squirrels can’t get in. You can literally see the squirrel holes in this picture.
My wife has been helping me because her 6’2″ height and long arms are very helpful compared to my 5’6″ stature. I am hoping this weekend to get more done. I am out of bricks so maybe I will pick some up on Wednesday afternoon.
I do like that in the picture you can see all the clover coming in. I’ve had a lot of it grow in from last year. I’ve been mowing it just like grass. I love it. I am going to seed the bald spots again and see if that helps. Clover is so nice! I don’t know why folks do grass yards.
We also had our HVAC system changed out a few months back to a heat pump. This is the single best adult purchase in my entire life. Our house is from 1935 and has thin exterior walls, so being able to control the heat and cold in the house to be comfy is a god send.
We spent $26,000 to do have the work done, and some of it was electrical to prep for this. We will see about getting some of that back at tax time, but honestly? I’d rather pay the small low interest home loan we got for it, and be comfortable.
It’s been a few months and we’ve had a few hot days, and it’s amazing. This, combined with the roof vents, and crawl space insulation means that no matter what, our home is the perfect temperature. This is the first time in a year and a half that it’s not over hot or over cold.
I decided I didn’t want to mow around the heat pump unit, so I dug up the grass around it, and laid down landscaping cloth, and put some gravel over that.
This is so tiny, but literally took me two hours, and I was physically wrecked for days!
I wanted to make sure the mowers or weed eaters didn’t come in contact with the important bits below:
Ignore the landscaping cloth peeking through, I am getting another bag of gravel this weekend to cover it.
Now we don’t have to worry about accidentally breaking anything. Honestly, I’d do the whole side of the house that way, because I hate grass lawns.
The other project I have been doing, a window or two at the time, is reflective UV film. I have been putting it on all the windows. it’s just like a giant vinyl sticker you install on the inside of your windows, that keeps out the heat, and is reflective enough you can’t see in.
You can hardly see in at all, and it sure does keep the heat of the sun out.
I was just impressed with how much heat this window film keeps out. It is also damn near impossible to see. In the picture above you can kind of see the back window, but that’s at 2 feet from the window. On the street, you see literally nothing. It’s 10/10 on blocking heat, and 10/10 on blocking folks from seeing in.
I am just trying to get all this infrastructure projects done. I don’t feel it’s the fun projects, but the basic ones to make everything livable. I am more into the decorating and planting, not the insulating and making the house livable.
I think next spring I will have all the garden beds protected with cages. I will have all the big livable projects done, and can start planting and maybe doing cool artsy decorating projects. I look forward to that.
Mostly, I am trying to give myself the grace that I would extend to anyone else. I am partially disabled. I can’t lift, or move the way healthy young folks can, so I am doing a lot. It’s just on my terms. I like to remind myself of that when I feel I am missing my own self imposed deadlines.
It is amazing though, that I have a house, and I can work on projects at my own pace because I will live here next year, and next year and so on. I sometimes forget I get to live here forever because I am so used to renting.
My garden is not going to be up to snuff this year. Between having surgery, and finding out the squirrels destroyed every bed I had, I am going to have to reset my expectations.
My big plan is to get the original garden space covered in hardware cloth. I did the back wall last weekend and I’ll be damned if the squirrels will get into that side now. The end walls are the hardest and most fiddly to do, so now I have to do the 20 feet overtop wall and roof, and then the last end with the door.
Hardware cloth is a way better option. I had no idea they could get through chicken wire.
Once I get that done, I will top up my soil, and do some late planting. Then move my attention to building squirrel cages for all the new beds I invested in last fall.
Somewhere in there I have this gazebo on the front deck to build too.
It’s going to be slow, but I own the house, so it’s okay. By next spring I will be on a roll.
I had this incredible panic about failing to meet my self imposed spring deadline. Then I realized it’s because I am not used to owning a home. If I didn’t get it done immediately, I might have to move, and never get to do it.
Home ownership is such a kindness. I can do as much are as little as I can realistically do, and there is no rush. I can do it all year and my garden will eventually be up and running.
I was working on my garden this last Saturday when as I stepped out on my back porch, a common brown roof rat shot out from under the stairs and across the yard. It had been eating dropped bird seed.
This is not the actual rat, as it was so fast I didn’t get more than a moment before it was gone.
It went in the direction of a neighbor’s yard that isn’t usually mowed, and has a lot of shrubbery and overgrowth. I was shocked because it was dead middle of the day. It was black and small, so I think it was a roof rat. It was not one of the bigger ones.
I do find this a little concerning, and this might be the inevitable outcome of bird feeders, and a garden.
I did some research and learned that you can add spicy pepper to your feed mixes and the birds can’t taste it, but mammals can. This actually might help with the squirrels which are literally digging up my entire yard and garden.
I tested it with the peanut tray, which the squirrels get into, and boy do they hate it! It’s 3TBSP to a pound of seed, and it works well. I added a little olive oil to make sure it stuck, and it worked. The crows still got the peanuts we feed them, and the squirrels are off elsewhere.
My wife is sad, but they are literally destroying the yard, digging up all the clover seeds, and every garden bed I have looks like this now below.
This bed was level and had leftover mulch, until the squirrels decided to go HAM on the beds. My Beet bed, and my tomato bed look the same.
As for my Squirrel Interdiction efforts? The reason they got into the area was that I used chicken wire. Chicken wire has too big a holes to use. I just ordered $300 in hardware cloth with 1/2 by 1/2 squares, and not I have to redo the entire structure this winter.
Sigh. Squirrels 1, me 0.
My New Plan
I am going to wrap the structure in hardware cloth. I am just going to do it over the chicken wire. I can’t see how that would matter at all. It will just create a double layer of fuck you to the squirrels.
I am going to cayenne pepper the bird seed and peanuts. That will give them less incentive to destroy my yard and my garden, and my wife will still have all the birds. The hawk that sits on the fence and looks for rodents might have to look elsewhere, but I am fine with that.
Garden Rat 