Another serious helper.

Look closely at her nose….she has been digging for gophers!

Here the small child pulls out a corn stalk.

It has been a while since I’ve written. My garden has been a small priority in the busy month of December. Needless to say, I did plant two or three boxes (yes boxes) of pansies that I dug out of the ground at Weidners Gardens in Encinitas. I took the kids and we had a great time running through their incredible fields of pansies and violas with spades and cardboard boxes to fill. The dirt there is so enviable. I try to dig up as much of it with each plant as I can and transport it home. (Don’t tell them!) 

Home with the six-year-old helping me plant all the pansies we dug up is another situation. Did I mention that each plant is about as big as a dinner plate? I think they are $1 each. You get giant, gorgeous, healthy plants that grow and grow. No root rot. Ever have that fatal disease with your pansies? They get yellow and sort of wiggle off their stalks? Dead before you know it. No way, with these babies. They are hearty and so easy….anyway, my six-year-old wanted to help plant all of them. And they still lived. While trying to dig all the holes before she “helped” too much, I heard her say, “Mommy these are so soft.” I thought she’d have a petal pressed between her fingers, but no, she was holding the roots of a giant pansy plant, smashing them and feeling their silky threads. Then she planted them.  They lived anyway. 

This brings me to the topic of this blog — things that kill your garden. Okay, that sounds kind of harsh. I mean to say that there are some common garden nuisances that I encounter, and I thought I’d share some of my techniques for helping fix these problems. This is getting long so I included a few photos at the start. I’ll write the rest later. I am out trying to take a picture of that gopher (or maybe it’s a mole.) I’m not sure what it is that leaves little mounds of dirt as well as a system of tunnels. My husband and I caught a mole under a flowerpot one day, but that is another story and another nuisance. Another day, another garden nuisance.