Playing Chess with Gophers

A while back I declared a truce with the gophers.  They, however, did not see my white flag.  Last week, they went at one of the two agave plants I have in the backyard.  Upon my return (I was gone for a week) I found one of the agaves dug out from underneath.  The agave [...]

The gophers won and hate mail

I have decided to surrender in my war against the gophers for four reasons. I am a highly ineffective opponent.  They are clearly winning.  Assuming regular new holes means they are doing just fine. I am not confident that they are doing any harm to the garden or the trees, I think they eat the [...]

Gopher update

I have yet to kill much less catch a gopher. I will spare you the details because otherwise you would think I am cruel.

Now we are cooking without gas! – weekend plans

Despite the fact I have yet to even coming close to catching a gopher, much less killing, skinning, cooking and eating one, at some point I am going to have to think about cooking. If I lived in the Appalachian’ foothills of my youth then wood would not be a problem.  But here in Phoenix [...]

Weekend Plans, “Great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts”

At the risk of sounding all Bill Murray via Caddyshack, this weekend will be my first experiment with trying to snare the gophers in my backyard. Previous attempts at trying to get them to walk into a beer cooler laid on its side and nibble of some radish leaves attached by rubber ban to the [...]

Weekend Wrap Up- Desert Botanical Garden and The Grow House

This weekend was mostly a research weekend. First, I re-visited the Arizona Desert Botanical Garden and snapped off some more pictures of plants that I can use for food. I also spent a couple of hours staring at the place I plan to have my garden, and trying to figure out how I would approach [...]