Garden Head!!!!

[Darlica]

I don't know if the American variation of mooses are more aggressive than the north European but ours are rather gentle minded, except for females with calfs that is but that goes for any animal wild or domesticated, they don't particularly like strangers close to the offspring. Bulls during rutting season can be aggressive too but they tend to charge at bigger objects than humans. It has happen that people at mountain bikes has been attacked in forests, I guess they move in a more moose like way...

[Aggie]

Are they as tasty as the ones we have here? 

Actual unprovoked attacks are quite rare in N. America, I think.  Elk are more dangerous, mostly because they get quite used to people and wander around town in national parks (Banff, for example).  Tourists (particularly Japanese, for some reason) tend to think that not afraid of people means tame and get WAY too close.  Don't put your kid on a wild animal for a photo op, m'kay?

[Earthling]

 
If I had a nickel for every incredibly stupid thing I've seen a tourist do out in my woods, including to/with animals, to/with plants and to/with inanimate objects, I'd probably be richer that anyone you've ever met. Every year they put their snowmobiles through the ice on the lakes, crash their ATV's into each other, get bitten/mauled by every species of critter that slithers, crawls, swims, walks or flies, fall off places they have no business being, eat things they shouldn't even touch, drop trees on their cars, houses and family members... they drive me to distraction. They think because there are no traffic lights, it must be the wild wild west, and anything goes (except common sense). Pardon my raving, but it's spring, and I just had my first day in the field this year, and discovered group one of my annual raft of new violations (coupla biggies already), so out-of-staters are on my "stuff that I'd scrape off my shoe outdoors if I stepped in it" list.

[Aggie]

Tourists? LOL, that's the locals here... 

_{and I don't consider myself one of the locals - you can take the boy outta BC but that don't make him an Albertan}

Hmmm...  fieldwork + outdoors + inspecting camps...  you part of the enviro-industry siblinghood we seem to be developing around here (alternatively, sounds park-rangerish)?  I'm off to the field for liability assessments tomorrow.

[Earthling]

<hangs head>

No, I'm a gummint employee. I enforce Maine Land Use laws. With limited effectiveness, I'm afraid.

[Aggie]

gummint is still part of the whole shebang - Swato's gummint too.  And I'll take land use as close enough. 

_{no shame in it either, ultimately my pay comes from Big Dirty Oil - even though we are helping 'em keep it clean out there, it's still keeping production going.} 

[Opsa]

Halp! The garden is devouring my garden furniture! This photo was taken a month ago. It's even more of a tangle, now.

[ivor]

I'm scheduling an air tanker drop of Roundup for 9PM CST.  I think about 10,000 gallons should do it. 

[Opsa]

You're not talking about a doomsday device again are you, Dr. Strangelove?

[ivor]

Nah, I'm still working on that.  I'm talking about one of those firefighting planes.

[Lindorm]

Lovely garden! (albeit perhaps a tad on the vigorous side )

Seriously, though, all those high plants and flowers are probably a mini-haven for a lot of insects and butterflies, most of whom find it very hard to live in well-manicured gardens with 32mm tall grass and tons of chemicals. At our summer house, we deliberately keep certain areas of our land with tall grass and wild flowers, together with some grown-up trees and some dead tree trunks, and it does seem to make a difference -we have quite a few butterflies, bumblebees, ladybugs and other nice critters buzzing around the house.

You seem to grow quite a bit of herbs in your garden, Opsa. Care to tell us a bit about what you grow? Spices, medicinal herbs, flowers? Do you try to grow combinations of plants that keep pests away? Our combination of Datura and chillies have worked wonders for keeping mites out of our windowsills and plants! 

[Opsa]

I grow a variety of things, but I do have a love for medicinal herbs. In that photo you can see my 'four winds' beds. To the front right, the blue-ish stuff is artemesia ludoviciana, or white sage, a nice medicinal herb used by some native American medicine folk. I also have sacred tobacco, another aboriginal favorite, which has done a fair job of keeping the insect pests at bay. Other plants in these beds include yellow and red cherry tomatoes, dill, cosmos, nicotiana alata, heritage raspberry, and lettuces. I just put in some beets and broccoli.

We like to keep a hedgerow around our yard as a habitat for local wildlife. Of course, our gardens get so wild at this time of year that it's pretty much a hedgerow, too.