Monday, May 4, 2009

attack of the moles


These are some pretty deep blue or bluish-purple flowers that grow alongside the house. They are doing quite well and there are lots of these plants. Isn’t it strange how some plants can thrive in sugar sand and others can’t. I don’t know the names of these but they are quite tall. Mary is having success with some gladiolus bulbs that she planted, perhaps I should try some bulb type plants also. Our orange tree in the back yard has some oranges forming on it. I told Mary that if the orange tree didn’t produce oranges this year that I was going to go to the arts and crafts store and get some fake plastic oranges and tie them to the branches and take a picture. I was watering one of our flower beds and I saw the sand forming a funnel shape in the ground like a sinkhole and it was getting bigger. It got to be several inches across and about two inches deep. I thought that this was strange. I had the hose on the ground in the flower bed about two feet from the funnel shaped depression with water coming out of the hose and the water was going straight down into the sandy ground. This was even stranger. I decided to dig into the funnel with a shovel because I figured that it was a mole tunnel that was collapsing. I was right. I took a shovel full of dirt out and there was a tunnel about an inch or two in diameter in the side of the hole with water pouring out of it into the hole. It was water from the hose about two feet away. The water from the house was going down into the tunnel system. I used the handle of the shovel to pound on the surface of the ground to collapse the tunnel leading over to the hose and the water from the hose stopped going straight down into the ground. I am worried that the moles will eat the gladiolus bulbs. Do they eat plant roots? I will have to check on that. Everyone have a nice day. Lew

1 comment:

seaside said...

Moles, varments, things that are undesirable. There may have been moles in our yard, but I haven't seen them. I also wonder if snakes don't tunnel underneath the ground when they travel. It is kind of hazey over at the beach and it isn't so bad with the heat. There is some beach breeze.