January 2007
Well, 2007 is here and with it the realisation that we do have another rodent around, feasting on Lily bulbs and Helleborus buds. I had hoped to see what sort of flower we'd get from the Helleborus seedling we got last summer, but it very much looks as if we'll have to wait until NEXT year before we can.
There is evidence this rodent has been after one of the bigger Lily bulbs we have nearby the Hellebores in the sideyard, if I'm not mistaken it is a 'White Henryi' the bugger has gone after. New traps have been procured, baiting them however has not yet given rise to the desired result.
By and large winter has been quite mild, as is evidenced by this group of Snowdrops.
And they're not the only bulbs poking their noses through the soil, we're also seeing tulips and daffodils coming up already.
There are plenty of buds and flowers on this ruddy red Hellebore; thank goodness the rodent has mostly passed them by in favour of some juicy Lily bulb, which I'm not exactly thrilled about either.
The only named Helleborus cultivar we have, 'Ivory Prince', blooms much later than the other. Plenty of buds, as you can see, but we'll have to wait another 4 or 5 weeks before we see the first of them open up.
It is noteworthy that a good number of the #1 and #3 pots we planted up with tulips and daffodils are showing plenty of noses. That somewhat concerns me, as I was hoping they'd be in bloom in April for our plant sale, but at the rate they're going they might be done already when the sale rolls around......not much I can do about that, is there?
Well, it looks as if we managed to cull the local rodent population by one overnight, January 7th. When I let Ace out for his morning constitutional @ 6.30AM on the 8th, he was spending an awfully long time sniffing the garden box through the barrier right by where we have the rat trap. Because it is so dark still that time of day I couldn't really confirm, so I had Waita check it later on in the day and she confirmed that indeed there was a dead rat BESIDE the trap, not IN but beside it. Can't quite figure out what happened there but she could tell the bait had not actually been touched, yet the trap had been triggered and we have a dead rat. And that's really all that matters. There seldom is only just one though, so we'll leave the trap baited and we'll see what happens next. I feel quite comfortable in saying though that we likely caught the main culprit when it came to getting the 'lily eater', mainly because of where it was found: right where we first noted the damage.
There is something fascinating about snow on plants around us, isn' there?