Garden

B y r hiann O n a llen

Damn deer! Blasted squirrels! Nefarious voles! Sometimes gardening is a battle. Who’s your most infuriating nemesis?

In my previous garden, the main mammalian culprit was the two-legged kind. The kind that steals your flowers and actually digs up entire plants, or takes off with your garden hose when you are not looking.

For years, my primary opponents here were raccoons. They rummage in your garden looking for tasty bits or sometimes just for a bit of fun. Is there fresh, open

soil? Well then, something tasty must be under there. You get the drift. Same thing with those pesky non-native Eastern gray squirrels. I keep telling them that they are invaders – more recent arrivals here than humans – but they just don’t listen. They don’t listen to the scolding of our native chickarees (Douglas squirrels) either. I’ve taken to armoring my tulip bulbs in underground baskets and mesh to protect them from gray squirrels. Too bad that doesn’t stop them from chewing the buds

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Scheduled Meetings & Events

Point Roberts Walkers: Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 8 a.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays on Elizabeth Drive and Saturdays at Lily Point.

PR Food Bank: Every Wednesday 8:30 – 10 a.m. at the Gulf Road Community Center.

School board meeting: Monday, June 28 at 7 p.m. Info: go.boarddocs.com/wa/wabsd/Board.nsf/Public.

PREP July 4 breakfast: Sunday, July 4, 8 – 11:30 a.m. at the community center. Three selections to choose from; regular or banana pancakes, scrambled eggs and sausage, and biscuits and gravy. All include fresh fruit. $7 for adults, $5 for kids.

Fourth of July parade: Sunday, July 4 around noon, will start from Breakers parking lot along Gulf Road and run down Tyee Drive to the marina overflow lot. Participants will gather at Breakers at 11:45 a.m.

Fireworks: Sunday, July 4 at 10 p.m. at the marina. A collaboration between Breakers and Westwind Marine, supported by community donations.

PR Park and Recreation: Monday, July 5 at 7 p.m., via Zoom. Info: prparkandrec.org.

PR Chamber of Commerce: Membership meeting Tuesday, July 6 at 7 p.m. Members will be emailed Zoom information. To become a member, visit pointrobertschamberofcommerce.com. and flowers once those emerge. But I must admit that I was touched and amused one spring to notice that some squirrel had left a delightful offering of shredded tulip petals at the foot of my Buddha statue. A peace offering, perhaps?

Neither squirrels nor raccoons can resist fruits that tempt us also. Figs often disappear just before they reach that perfect plump ripeness. I also figure that squirrels must be color blind because I am constantly sweeping up bits of unripe strawberries that they spit out.

Last year and this year, I covered my entire strawberry patch with 30 percent shade cloth netting – dense enough to thwart squirrels but not open enough to entangle birds.

Last year, the strawberry plants even seemed to thrive with the less direct sunlight and greater soil moisture retention that the shade cloth netting provided.

One thing I’ll grant squirrels is that, without opposable thumbs, they don’t carry things very far. Not like raccoons. I swear that, one day, I will find a raccoon’s treasure chest of stolen garden ornaments, pump filters and other small objects left unattended in the garden.

The other four-footed fiends? Well, the local bush rabbit (most likely eastern cottontails) is not usually a pest. But they do go after succulent leafy greens if they are in easy reach.

Since I grow most of my edibles in raised beds, I consider them innocuous garden companions. However, some of my friends beg to differ. I admit that sometimes I wonder what happened to some of my seedling herbs and veggies when there are no signs of marauding squirrels or raccoons thrashing around – not that delicate nibbling is their style anyway. Perhaps I should stop blaming slugs and wood lice, and keep my eyes open for fluffy pests.

My other pint-sized peeve is the creeping vole, particularly in population boom years. Short, tubby, mouse-like rodents, I hear the little devils squeaking and moving under ground cover. Unlike the aforementioned pests, voles are surreptitious and almost never seen alive.

They spend their time underground and undercover, preferring to eat plant roots under the cover of darkness or soil. I have lost many treasured rockery plant to them. But I consider myself more fortunate than a friend who lost his entire beetroot crop to them one summer. And other friends found a large stash of hijacked species tulip bulbs in a hidden vole nest.

Like their Arctic near-cousin the lemming, voles have boom-and-bust cycles. I have not kept track, but my suspicion is that we are working rapidly toward a boom year. If not this year, then next.

In their last boom year, I did a lot of research on vole control. The eventual answer? Get an outdoor cat. Our boys are indoor cats, but I have high hopes for our new neighbor’s ace predator cats. (Please, just leave the birds, snakes and chickarees alone!)

You might have noticed that I have not mentioned deer, which are the bane of many gardeners.

Well, I personally have not had a big problem with them in my garden, although the occasional one munches fruit shrub foliage or punches great big holes in my garden soil as it wanders through.

I am more than happy with the minimal damage they cause in my garden because the only true deterrent seems to be a very high fence.

But if you consider yourself an expert on gardening in deer country, I’m sure that the readers of the All Point Bulletin would love to hear from you.

And I might too, since past behavior is no guarantee.

PR Taxpayers Association: Wednesday, July 14 at 7 p.m., via Zoom. Link: bit.ly/2U4RTIo.

PR Hospital District: Wednesday, July 14 at 7 p.m., via Zoom. Info: pointrobertsclinic.com.

PR Historical Society meeting: Wednesday, July 21 at 7 p.m. via Zoom. More information to follow.

Circle of Care Board of Trustees meeting: Monday, July 26 at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Link: email prcircleofcare@ gmail.com.

History Center: Open Saturdays 11-3 p.m. ongoing. Masks required. Hand sanitizer available at the door.

Whatcom County Al-Anon: Online meetings available via Zoom and GoToMeeting. Info: whatcomafg.org.

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www.good-sam.com/stafholt s Chwynyn Vaughn, at ease in her garden on Culp Court.

Courtesy photo

peopLe of the point

B y M arg O t g riffiths

Chwynyn Vaughn’s Garden Stand, located on Culp Court in Point Roberts, is the culmination of her holistic approach to life; a blending of her love of sustainability, organic goodness, natural remedies and of living in community.

How did it begin? “I had extra produce that I wanted to share. And I love flowers.” She had a reason to plant extravagantly and reap benefits for others in Point Roberts. Her salient goals are quality and affordability. At the Garden Stand, organic vegetables are within reach, as are soaps, tinctures, creams and balms. “And they work,” Chwynyn says.

Overarching the enjoyment she takes in preparing products in a sustainable way, Chwynyn’s love of having conversations with her customers is the bonus. “There’s so much depth. I have no clock on me … I can visit for as long as I want. It’s a gift to me.”

In this way, Chwynyn has become familiar with the people of the Point. She believes that here there is the opportunity for

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