At long last the soil has warmed up enough to plant dahlias. Every fall, after the flowers’ fireworks display of color is long gone, I dig up the tubers before the soil gets cold and soggy and tuck them to sleep in a laundry basket filled with peat moss in the garage. Come spring, I bring the wizened, gnarled batch back outside and bury them in the soil of the planters on the deck.
This year, however, a little Douglas squirrel who lives in our garden decided to get in on the act of spring planting. Which meant kicking my dahlia tubers aside as he buried sunflower seeds filched from beneath the birdfeeder.
He spent hours each day bounding back and forth between the little garden that was blanketed in spilled seeds and the planters.
I investigated a few days later to find out more about his work and spotted a dozen holes crammed with sunflower seeds.
Now, of course, the seeds are growing, and because they’re not properly spaced out, they’re doing so in a tangled, helter-skelter fashion.
Eventually I had to spoil Squirrel’s fun by tacking chicken wire over the planters so the poor dahlias could sprout. I did leave a big pot of soil near the sunflower seeds, though, so that he could continue his sunflower-stashing project.
Christina Wilsdon 