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Stories from the yard

Jim Boxberger
Posted 3/25/22

I have to share a couple of cute stories from the past few days before I get into plants this week. The first one has to do with the last snowstorm we had two weeks ago.

I just happened to be at …

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Stories from the yard

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I have to share a couple of cute stories from the past few days before I get into plants this week. The first one has to do with the last snowstorm we had two weeks ago.

I just happened to be at the counter when a customer came in for a bag of birdseed and critter mix. She also purchased a dozen nightcrawlers (worms) and I asked if she was going fishing. She was not, she was feeding her robins that were deprived of her lawn by the snow. She told me that years ago when her plow guy came to plow her driveway he inadvertently plowed up a patch of grass as well.

Being that the rest of her lawn was cover in snow, the robins would flock to this little patch of uncovered grass to try and find a meal. So she started buying worms to feed her robins. She throws out a couple worms at a time and because it is so cold they can’t run away.

After the robins come for the couple of worms she puts out, she throws a couple more down and waits for those to go as well. A rather ingenious idea since robins don’t eat birdseed.

The second story has to do with the cleaning we are doing at the store right now. We rented a backhoe to resurface our back driveway around our warehouse and to redo the gravel on the side of the garden center.

While cleaning in the back we came across a patch of garbage that our bear had taken out of our trash bin to dine on in the woods. I had a couple of the guys start collecting the trash while I went in for lunch so that I could clean up that section with the backhoe after lunch. My garden center manager, Chris, came in to show me what they found in the garbage in the woods.

It happened to be Chris’s car keys that he lost last fall. Apparently they must have fallen into a trash bag when he was throwing out trash one night before the store closed. What are the chances that, that bag of garbage would be sitting in the woods and that the keys just happen to fall out of the bag, when it gets picked up. Needless to say, Chris was buying a lotto ticket on his way home tonight.

So those were the stories that were just too cute not to share. But now it is officially spring and time to get the gardens ready. We have been busy this week working on the back driveway of the store and garden center. By this weekend everything should be in pretty good shape and the first load of shrubs should be in as well.

Berry bushes and perennials are coming along nicely in the greenhouse and the grass is starting to get greener again. Everyone has been asking for fruit trees already, but they have been delayed by a couple weeks due to trucking shortages. We should have received ours already, but instead they will be the first week in April.

At my house, I noticed my tulips are starting to come up, which means it is time to get the deer netting around them, It is almost like the tulips call to the deer, come eat me, as soon as the flower buds start to appear. In the past five years, I have only seen my tulips bloom twice.

I get a little busy at work and forget to do things at home. Have you ever heard then saying, “the plumber’s faucet aways leaks”. Well the Guru’s garden isn’t aways as beautiful as it should be.

Deer eat my tulips, chipmuncks eat my strawberries, woodchucks get my cucumbers and birds get my blueberries, but every spring I have hope that this year will be better than the last. And it is that hope that keeps me gardening year after year.

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