At the beginning of June, I came home after being gone for a few days at a conference. Of course, one of the first things I did after arriving home was to check on my garden. As I was admiring the progress my plants were making, I noticed a rather large area of dirt that was being pushed up from below. So, I started brushing away the chunks of dirt to discover a pair of rather substantial seedlings coming up. They looked something like this:
Recognize it?
I dug down a little further, only to discover the reason the stupid squirrel would not leave my garden alone this spring: a peanut shell. That's right, some squirrel had stashed away a whole peanut, which had subsequently sprouted (both nuts) and taken root right in the middle of my onions. They were too close to the onions to leave them there, but at the same time, the plants were so healthy that I didn't have the heart to just toss them in the yard waste bin. So, I carefully removed them, wrapped them in wet paper towels, and brought them to my brother Paul, who transplanted them in his garden.
End of story, right? Or so I thought. In the week or so that followed, I found peanut sprouts numbers three, four, five, and six, all coming up in various locations around the yard: in the strawberries, in the garden, in the middle of the yard (I had less trouble digging these little guys up and tossing them). After nearly a month without finding another peanut plant, imagine my surprise when I found this last night:
Yep, that's peanut plant number seven, in the strawberries, along with numbers eight and nine (in the first photo) in the raspberries. Apparently the squirrels have had quite a good time pillaging and plundering someone's stash of peanuts somewhere in the neighborhood.Labels: peanuts, squirrels
