glorious elation, tragic heartbreak

thank you for allowing me to vent
maybe you all will understand my heartbreak.

i received some amarylis in a trade a while back. created a new bed for them and planted them faithfully. i check on them occasionally to see if any growth had come, but never found anything.

yesterday will out cleaning my yard/mowing my lawn i found 2 in the middle of the lawn, rotted and soft beyond any salvage. i dug up the pathc- nothing oh nowhere at all are my milk and honey criniums. oh i have anxiety about finding them somewhere laying dead like roadkill on my front drive.

oh that dog!!! it is so neurotic. it's not even my dog!!! if only the owners were responsible, but no!!! or at least tell me when they know he's done something. i'd rather learn about it so i can fix it and maybe save them, than fine my babies rotted and dying.

okay, but they're gone now, i just have to finish the damages list and it will all be over with. breathe... must let it pass... thats okay because now i have more room for the gladiolas right??:~0

this so spoiled my day that i almost forgot my glorious elation part. i got my evaluation from a class i took last year. it was very good, very much better than i expected or could hope for. which means my incomplete is taken care of and i can get financial aid to go back to school!!! very excited about the class, one of the teachers is the same one that got me started on my first garden last year. can you imagine the joy of starting and maintaining a garden for homework?

Congratulations on your good news guynh, sincere condolences on your unfortunate predicament. I have the same problem with my nextdoor neighbours cat, always prefering to use my garden rather than his own unkempt patch of land. People told me to get a cat, "That will solve it." they all said. Yer, right, but they never told me not to pick one thats quiet and loving...in other words a real wimp!!
If anyone has any ideas for ridding my garden of nextdoors bully please let me know.

Quynh - let me add Congrats! (and condolences....I have two "digging dogs" myself, but at least they're mine, so I take full responsibility for the ditches they dig!)

Daisy_Chain, have you tried laying rose branch cuttings around your flowers? I did that in my last garden, and it seemed to work pretty well - they were old garden roses, very thorny stems, and the cats definitely decided they weren't worth messing with. (Of course, I got thorned a few times while weeding, but at least I wasn't cleaning cat feces out of my beds, or replanting things the cats had dug up!)

Right, I'm of to the hedgerows tomorrow to do a little light pruning! thanks go_vols.
(I just hope I don't end up with a vets bill for my own cats spiked paw.

Now, this is an old wives tale, so whether it works is beyond me, but I was told that placing moth balls around your flower bed and garden will keep the cats out.
And as for the dogs, you can resort to what I've done;
I fenced my yard with 5' high no climb and I've also hauled dogs off to the pound. After paying to get their dogs out a couple of times, they tend to either keep them contained or find new homes for them. Of coarse, if the dogs are let to run for very long around here, the farmers are bound to catch them in their fields, and the dog just "dissapears".
It's an aweful ending, and it's too bad that only the dog pays the price. I'm not saying any harm should come to the owners, but there should be a law or something that they can't get another dog or cat until they have a place for it.
And if the animal is then caught outside of their yard more than, say, three times, then they can't have another for 5 years. Or something to that nature.

And Congrats quynh on your great evaluation!

Heidi

thanks heidi
it was hard to figure out what to do since it was my roommates dog- and they wanted to put him in the fenced area. but oh wells they've moved out (thank goodness)and i have my garden and my house back.
i don't have the heart to take a dog to the pound i'm always trying to take them out. i don't think laws would work, people will do what they want and some just don't have any sense. it would be hard to monitor too. what's scary is people who cant even take care of their pets wanting children.

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Squirrel solution? Shotgun and a good aim. No kidding. I've got a brother-in-law kind of like Cousin Eddy on National Lampoons' vacation - if you can't bring yourself to pull the trigger, let me know and I'll send him your way!

Dogs trained with a squirt gun? I wish! I must have the dumbest dogs ever, because they will sit on the invisible fence, shaking and quivering and the little beeper just going nuts. I will probably try the squirt gun (fire hose????) this summer, but I'm not holding my breath! (We've upped the voltage on the fence, so they do tend to stay away from it now. Their training has taken three times longer than the fence instructions indicated it should.....)

But my cat - now there's a candidate for the water treatment. I've been known to use a spray bottle on him when he forgets that kitchen counters are not part of his domain. Then he gets really snitty for a few days, but he eventually gets over it. (And since he's one of those cats that can't stand to be held or petted, being snitty isn't exactly a stretch for him......in fact, its hard to tell when he's in a snit, unless you live with him.)

go_vols you make me laugh. Your house sounds like it would be at home in a Police Acadamy film, LOL
Electric fencing, shot guns, just remind me of this if i ever decide to emigrate to Murfreesboro' (where ever that is!!)

go_vols - must be something in the TN air. My 12 guage Mossberg shotgun is EXTREMELY effective on those garden pests.

Except a mole the other day. 2 shots knocked him back 10 feet. He got up, dusted himself off, and ran away!!! He must have skin made of steel or something.

Dave

You lot over there are such bullies. Pick on someone your own size will ya. LOL

Dave
Are you sure you weren't using rocksalt? LOL

Quynh, Congratulations on the school stuff. I also have neighbor dogs who romp around; encircling with chicken wire keeps them out-mostly, how about laying it on the bed and pinning it down, it should not harm them, but no fun if you can't get a good dig going.


Dave, That mole was the one that I live trapped and relocated after tripping over the shovel and cutting my knee. He left WI for warmer areas, but still remembered his trauma. lol Marcia

Gee, I guess I should think twice about how I respond here....ya'll are getting the wrong idea about us!!! LOL!!! (Okay, you've probably got the right idea about BIL aka Cousin Eddy; he's a great guy, but I think he WOULD drive a camouflage-painted RV if his wife would let him!!!! LOL!!!)

I do have a funny tale to tell on the former owner of our home. He apparently gave his (now our) neighbors a lot to chuckle over.....it seems he had a penchant for sitting on the back deck and using pole cats for target practice(that's skunks to the rest of ya'll....) One neighbor set up a concrete skunk in the middle of the night; the next day this guy went to town on it, shot it to pieces before he finally figured out it wasn't real!!!!

Before somebody gets all in an uproar over shooting innocent critters, I should point out that Rutherford County holds first place for the number of rabies cases reported in our state; most of them from rabid skunks and squirrels. It's not a good thing to be first in, so I'm all for anybody who eliminates a few now and then.

Oh yes, we have a mole, too....DH nearly took off a few fingers trying to set Vicious Trap #2 - the DELUXE model!

I figure it's a matter of time before we have a snub-nosed lab puppy, but he thinks the dogs will leave it alone. I AM ready to eliminate the mole problem once and for all - anybody got a shotgun handy?

All sounds a bit drastic, but if needs must, LOL
I feel very lucky after listening to you lot talking about your garden preditors. The most i get are slugs and snails, oh and nextdoors cat. Very boring

yikes!!
i guess that one advantage for not living on a farm. was driving through some of the farm land south of here and was really wishing my house was down there. oh wells i dont think i could handle it. i cant even look at a mole much less touch a dead sliced one long enough to take it out of the traps ugh~~~
although i have to admit up until last year i couldn't touch a worm. gardenings great for courage eh?

This may sound bad to some but I know that it works on dogs and cats alike.If the mulch around your plantings is soft and soundless when stepped on,add some louder materials to it;magnolia or oak leaves.Next practice your throwing arm a little ,underhand preferrable.Use objects that don't roll too much, like a plastic ashtray,a bag of plastic fence insulators,or even an old pair of pliers.Make sure it's something that you won't mind leaving out in the weather.The next time you can catch the culprit in the act,fire a warning shot into the mulch NEAR not on the suspect.I'll do this from the corner of a building or with just my arm outside the screen door to add to the animals surprise by not knowing the source of it's interuption.After three or four good scares the animal will usually look for more peaceful areas.In severe cases of hardheaded animals I have found single packs of fire-crackers work every time.Please make sure that if you are going to try this, you practice your tossing abilities with unlit packs first,let's not hurt the animals unless we've got to eat them.

To me this is mean, but when my brother had a paper route, dogs would try to bite him or pull him off of his bike..Mom fixed him a big squirt gun filled it with ammonia and after one squirt the dogs left him alone...

Dogs, dogs, dogs...I have 7..They do not dig anywhere except there own area. I learned many years ago to train my dogs to dig in there own digging pit. I builth them an area, 3 sided, with 1-1 1/2 foot walls. I put a mixture of dirt and play sand in it and began training them by taking some of their favorite toys and rawhide chews and burying them very shallow, while they watched. They, of course dug them up, while I watched and praised them. Much of the reason a dog digs is to find cool earth to lay in on hot days. Mu dogs were chastised for digging outside of their pit, and rewarded for digging in it. This was 4 years ago, and I have not had a problem in that long. Last August, I got my last lab pup and she made only 3 or so mistakes. I think she learned primarily from watching the others. i moved last year in Sept, and the dogs pit was one of the first things I did in a back corner of my yard. For me, the small sacrifice of space is well worth it to me.
Sandy

i think dogs are wonderfully animals and can be great companions when they are well trained. i almost felt sorry for the dog that was here. he must have been so confused most of the time. he got rewarded and punished using the same methods and it was very irregular. his owner moved out to the woods/fields so hopefully he's got more room to roam and dig.

Sandy, that's a great idea - I may copy it this summer! You're right about dogs digging to find a cool spot, so I had already planned to reserve some space under the trees for the pups. But their own "digging pit" could really help preserve my beds that are inside their invisible fence "yard". As much as I complain about them, they really are pretty good dogs, and are proving to be fairly trainable. (I can now confidently attest to the effectiveness of an invisible fence when accompanied by intensive, consistent behavioral training.)

What a great idea, Sandy!

I really can attest to the digging pit working..5 labradors and 2 pomeranians, and I(my dogs) have also had 7 litters, with one on the way, and no problems..puppies always have big fun when they are taken out to play. I also tell everyone who buys dogs from me about this, because I never want to see people having unneccesary problems with their new family member