Garden Mystery

Purple and yellow viola

Its pretty wild out here on the edge, even though a 25 minute drive can bring us to just about anything we could need. That sense of danger and uncontrollable nature often presents us with some surprise. Most surprises are quite welcome and bring on a sense of awe, others not so awesome, more like frightening. On the welcome side, many visits by an impressive variety of turtles. On the not welcome side random body parts of the victims of survival of the fittest. We had one of the second category this week. It was a quite unpleasant discovery of the rump, with tail still attached, of some sort of striped tailed critter. It was so unpleasant we decided to ignore it for a couple of days. Three days later I returned to the scene of the discovery only to find there no longer was any flesh or fur there. It had all been removed, no trace was left in the area. Ironic how these sort of things are such a natural occurrence they take care of themselves with no human intervention required.

A raptor: the Osprey

What are my guesses on the scenario of this event? There are many possibilities. We have many resident raptors eagles, ospreys, falcons, and hawks all patrol this area. They are constantly on the hunt overhead, any one of them could have done this deed. They also have a tendency to come back and finish an unfinished job. They do not waste a kill, if spooked off, they will return. We have seen that story repeated many times over.  I understand that racoons will also seek meat early in the spring, as it is now. There are a few feral cats in the neighborhood, so they too are capable and know to hunt down bird, rabbits, squirrels and who knows, maybe even a raccoon. .

Viola torn out of the ground by a mystery visitor

We had another mystery event occur yesterday. On Monday I planted some violas outside my kitchen door. I dug a nice hole for the plants, rich in organic soil and topped with some wood chip mulch( my magic garden ingredient). When I came outside the next morning to take a garden walk and to check the progress of perennials, herbs and veggies, I discovered that my one of my pair of Violas was completely ripped out of the ground. A mysterious interloper dug out my plant, tossed it aside and dug another hole right next to the original. Very strange!

the wounded victim, torn from the ground

evidence of a grub hunter visit at night

What animal could be bothered to do that? My guess was a skunk searching for the multitude of grubs in our so called lawn.

It happens, what can you do? Nothing! I replanted the Viola, tidied up the garden bed, watered the plant and went about my business. Later in the day I returned to see how the plant was doing. It had perked up and at that time I noticed that whatever had ripped the plant out of the ground had also eaten off about a quarter of the greens on the plant. That changed my opinion of who the guilty party was. I'm thinking my resident rabbit thought it made a great evening salad.  Maybe he did me a favor, because the plant is not looking too bad and it has perked up nicely. I goes to show, you just never know what is going to happen in the garden, its all an adventure!

yellow viola recovered from being torn out of the ground