We have not had a front yard since last April. The dogs we adopted made a sand pit and chased all wildlife away. I thought they just disappeared like other wildlife. It is so nice to hear the birds singing and even the squirrels running around burying acorns. Purple Martins, Blue Jays, Cardinals and others are glad to have their bird bath back. Even the butterflys left the yard. Foxy loves to bug dive, never knew of a dog that will spend hours chasing bugs and butterfly's like she does..
We put the dogs in the backyard which is where they spend a lot of time anyway, although they preferred the front yard and front porch where we spend most of our time when not busy. Back yard in larger but they like the run of both. We closed the gate to the backyard and closed them off. I miss seeing them all the time, but we do visit them. Spring we will plant more grass and once it takes root they can visit for short periods of time, not long enough to chase off birds and destroy lawn. We do let them visit on lease on porch and take them on walks.
I love looking at the birds at our bird bath in the evening. They kind of queue up and take turns splashing. There's a pair of Cardinals that seem to show up every day. But don't get me started on squirrels. Those annoying little rodents are digging in every garden bed and pot plant in my yard. Two of them were digging in the mulch around our newly-planted tree yesterday evening so I had to chase them away. They weren't so brazen when we had our little dog, Harry. He loved chasing squirrels.
I feel your pain with the squirrels. The squirrels have been gnawing our vinyl shutters on the house and around the roof vent boot on top of the house, the little bastards! The neighbors have a cable petastal in their yard and the squirrels have ate a hole in it as well. Squirrel season is in. I am going to go all "Granny Clampett" on them if they don’t stop it!
I hear ya!! So far we haven't had any property damage (other than scattered potting soil) or I would be loadin' up. Our next door neighbor's daughter fills a squirrel feeder with peanuts in the shell, so I spend my free time pulling up peanut vines from my flower beds. I guess between all the acorns, the free peanuts, and the 2 pecan trees on our block the little varmints don't need to chew up stuff to find something good to eat.
I have been feeding the squirrels here for years, but I haven't noted any damage they have done. In my opinion, raccoons and pigeons are far more significant pests. The squirrels sometimes rearrange my landscaping, but that's more amusing than annoying. I might plant bulb perennials in my front rock garden in the fall, and they will come up in the backyard vegetable gardens in the spring. I figure the squirrels must be far more experienced in landscaping than I am.
I started gardens the second or third year after moving in and planted daffodil bulbs. The next morning every single one had been dug up by squirrels. I replanted them and the same thing happened. Some did grow the following year but never came back.
Yes, me too. I also remembered they plucked the buds off my tulips. This year though I used some old bird cages given to me by my neighbor. The bottom slides out and I made a trench around them so the squirrels would have to really dig deep to get inside. It worked there are photos on another post.
Perhaps because I feed the squirrels, they are more likely to move my bulbs than to eat them. Probably figuring they had found some other squirrel's stache, they replant them somewhere else.
I will tell you what is odd, there are no grasshoppers here this year. NONE. Normally that could be a good thing because they eat all my veggies but this was not a good growing year. The bad part is the chickens look forward to them. It is fun to watch them catch the bugs and we gather up a few of them to help. But there are absolutely no grasshoppers. Worms are at a shortage too. It was either way too wet or ground cracking dry this year. Weird. Twilight Zone music. Squirrels we have and worse, chipmunks. The mourning doves were here this year.