Spring Cleaning in the Yard

On the days it has been sunny and warm-ish here in New Mexico I have been slowly but surely getting rid of all the brush and pruning the wily salt cedar bushes. I cannot even begin to count how many truckloads have been taken to the community brush pile since last fall.

It is very hard to garden here in the desert. Mainly I let the native plants take over, but in a somewhat controlled manner. I have planted a lot of different cactus paddles that I have gotten from various neighbors and they are doing well. I don't know if I am going to attempt to plant sunflowers anymore because we simply cannot keep the damn rock squirrels from eating them. I work so hard to propogate them inside the house to transplant. I have spent hours cutting up plastic pop bottles to make "sleeves" for the young plants which work for a while but as they grow taller and up out of the sleeves, the squirrels just reach up and eat them anyway. The first year we lived in this house during the spring of the pandemic (2020) I had lots of time to garden and had a wildly successful sunflower garden. But every year since the squirrels have taken over because they found a delicious food source. I guess you can't blame them for figuring out how to survive.

Everything I plant gets a chicken wire cage around it, even the potted flowers on the porch! But now that we have a cat I'm curious to see if having her around will keep the squirrels at bay...

Gardening is definitely a challenge here in the arid west. I have converted to mostly native grasses and plants much to my neighbor's distress. No lawn, no grubs. Pollinators took care of the grasshoppers and other "bad" insects. I cover baby seedlings with chicken wire too to keep the squirrels out. Last fall, the mouse population exploded but then a family of hawks showed up and took care of that problem. Maybe they eat squirrels too?

Yes, the hawks were active around my yard last summer. They got one of the juvenile mourning doves on the ground because it hadn't quite learned to fly yet. It was kind of awful to watch all the feathers scatter. I have to remind myself it is the circle of life and the mourning dove pair we've had for years are quite prolific in producing many sets of fledglings.

I just hope the hawk doesn't get the cat someday. She was somewhat feral when we started feeding her last October so I have to believe she has some street smarts. She is getting to be a well-fed house cat these days. It's impossible to turn her into an indoor-only cat though. I will always try to get her inside at night so the coyotes don't get her either. I have to remember these things are a fact of life out here in the desert and to not get too attached.