Attack of the Crazy Squirrel

Today we completed the garden overhaul. It's been a 4-week process of harvesting, clearing, planting, transplanting, watering in, fertilizing, and mulching. Today we worked on clearing out the final bed (on the left) and mulching all of the beds with hay. 

Midway through, we were greeted by a very friendly squirrel. This squirrel had visited last week and had crawled over Terry and Alyson. Today he hung out in the garden, tried drinking my coffee, and  munched on greens.

And then used Andrea as a personal jungle gym.

Then, without warning, the squirrel climbed all over her. At first we thought it was funny and cute. How social, we thought. He followed us over to the food prep area while we made lunch and got more bold, climbing all over the picnic table, drinking from the water pitcher, and treating us like we were trees. Finally, we resorted to water defense, hoping a spritz of water would deter him. I knew it was probably a matter of time before he set his sites on me, and sure enough when I pointed the spray bottle at him he jumped on me, like the scene out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Startled, I did my typical scream-like-a-girl dance and eventually knocked the crazy little thing off of me. Even then he just wouldn't quit, so Terry finally gave the little guy a time out by putting a bucket over him, and even then he tried to dig out! Squirrel aside, I was inspired after today's garden maintenance to spend some time in my own. My tomatoes have been victim to aphids, then caterpillars, and now a fungus. I realized after clearing out Terry's grow boxes that when plants are too full or too close together or leaves touch the soil, it's an invitation for pests. I see now that my tomatoes were in desperate need of being thinned out so that the natural predators can get in and do their thing. I moved around some plants to make room for another collard green plant, 2 new lettuce plants and 2 climbing Malabar spinach plants. I soaked seeds overnight and planted those today as well. It's starting to warm up here and I can see the top of my soil starting to turn sandy, so I covered with a layer of my compost and mulched it with oak leaves from the yard. Altogether I'm growing lettuce, arugula, 3 varieties of tomato, heirloom peppers, jalapeño, cucumber, 2 varieties of spinach, mesclun green, collard greens, lacinto kale, 2 types of watermelon, squash, sage, spearmint, basil, thyme, cilantro, and parsley. I'm also growing zinnias, 4 o'clocks, marigolds and nasturtiums. Phew, it doesn't look like that much in my garden beds, but I really do have quite a bounty growing out back!