Mein kleiner Garten Freunden

While I'm still battling groundhogs, there is some goodness in the garden. Forget the foes for a moment and lets celebrate the garden friends!

Whats more serendipitous than to find a garden friend like a toad hopping about while your weeding, watering or doing some other task your vegetables require. Its like a small way of knowing, hey your not alone and there is someone here to help with your pests.

Toads are great great great. I wish I saw more of them, though I'm convinced I'm seeing more and more each year. There is one or two I can usually rely on seeing hopping around certain garden beds. For awhile there was one near my pie pumpkins and alpine strawberries. When I let my kitty Simon hang out with me in the garden I carefully watch where he goes in case he wanders over near Mr. toads neighborhood. There are things you can do to encourage toads to take up residence in your garden, but I haven't looked into it much.

I've read that toads can eat up to 200 insects a night and 15,000 a year- respectively. In the Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward C. Smith, its written that toads are, 'especially helpful if slugs and cutworms haunt your garden.' YES! This would be my garden!

Another commonly misunderstood, but I'd say equally helpful, garden friend is the common garter snake. Sometimes they are even called garden snakes, though I think this is more of a mispronunciation of 'garter' combined with their presence in gardens. Or should I say garten! Ha ha ha. Anyway, unfortunately toads are part of their menu, but when they are not finding toads for a meal they eat plenty of slugs and other insects. I have to admit I see more snakes than toads in my garden.

While on a groundhog burrow hunting rampage this past week I exposed several logs from a cherry tree we had taken down before we established the garden several years ago now. These logs are very close to the garden fence, in fact in the picture take below I was standing almost against the garden fence. The logs are now like beach front property for basking snakes- its great! By the way can you spy all five- yes FIVE garter snakes in the photo?



Garter snakes galore.



snake skin on garden fence

Its one of my favorite things to do now is to look for the snakes on the logs as I do a security sweep of my fence perimeter (to spot any groundhog activity). I found the snake skin pictured above and put it on the fence so I could look at it later, now its dried in place... hows that for garden decor.

One of the most interesting things about the group of six snakes on the logs (the sixth isn't pictured but was there all the same) was finding one that had eyes all glazed over- which I've never seen before. Maybe it was blind, for as I approached everyone for their photo op this one was the last to slither away (making me wonder if it couldn't see me). OR its about to shed?