Blog

I have been delighted with my garden this year, and the red zinnias have been my favorite. Every morning I peek out my back door to view their progress.  So, you can imagine my horror one morning when I looked out and saw my pots turned over, and the zinnias spread across the patio.  I could not imagine what had happened.  I repotted all the plants and cleaned up the mess.  It happened again the next night...my poor flowers!  I suspected squirrels since I had plenty of them hanging around, but once I did some research and learned that raccoons love to dig in potting soil for grubs, I figured that was the culprit - who knew.  

Someone at Home Depot suggested buying a large fake owl to scare the critters away so I purchased one and placed it near the zinnias.  I hardly slept waiting for the security camera alert to go off and once it did, I ran to the back door and peeked out to see a very large raccoon sniffing the plastic owl that it had just knocked over.  Neither the motion light nor the scary owl seemed to worry the raccoon.  I opened the door and made some noise and it left (temporarily).  I prepared for the next night by putting some pennies in an empty jar, tying string to the top and running the string to just inside my door as well as sprinkled some cinnamon on the soil as I read that usually hides the smell of the grubs.  Again, the alarm went off so I went to the door to see the rascal digging (despite the cinnamon).  I pulled the string from inside the door and the jar fell over and rolled across the patio, but do you think it frightened the raccoon?  No, he stopped digging, curiously walked over to the jar and started playing with it like a cat might with a ball of string.  Really!  Again I stepped out the door and shooed him away at 2:00 in the morning.  The next night I pulled all kinds of spices out of the cabinet and sprinkled paprika, chili powder, tumeric and cumin on top of the soil - it still didn't work.  The following day I made a trip to the store and purchased several containers of red pepper and coated the soil heavily.  That night the rascal arrived with a couple of junior friends.  They sniffed around the soil and then starting pawing at their noses.  While they hung around for a while, they stayed away from the flower pots.  I opened the door and the little one looked up at me (he was pretty cute).  They all slowly waddled away and guess what - they haven't been back since - red pepper did the trick.

My red zinnias have bounced back, and I finally got a chance to paint them! 

Linda