I have nothing against onion grass—except for the fact that it is invasive and springing up throughout my yard and garden beds. I have nothing against gray squirrels, which are similarly ubiquitous. During this time when we are all “sheltering in place”, the battle against both has taken on a new dimension.
I went all in on pansies this year to brighten my garden in dark times. Pansies, with their expressive “faces” and gorgeous colors, are the essence of springtime. I have planted them in the large planting boxes that flank my front steps and the cast-concrete planters that stand by the entrance to my back garden. A few days ago, seeking respite from work, housework and other responsibilities, I took a turn around the garden to admire the daffodils, hyacinths and other glorious spring plants. When I got to the cast-concrete planters, I saw that plants and dirt from the containers had been strewn willy-nilly over the surrounding ground. The culprit, without a doubt, was a gray squirrel. As I replanted the pansies, my relaxed, in-the-garden state of mind turned to rage.
Like everyone else who lives in the suburbs, I have always had squirrels romping in and out of the yard. I frequently remove the tiny oak and chestnut seedlings that the squirrels “plant” in the fall. Sometimes in the early spring I have to relocate crocus bulbs that they dig up and replant in unusual places. These are minor nuisances, but generally, the squirrels are much less destructive as the groundhogs and deer.
This year all of that changed. Our property now seems to be the primary residence of a gray squirrel that my daughter has nicknamed the “Mission Impossible Squirrel or MIS for short. This animal, which is plump, with a fine plume of a tail, is bolder and brassier than others of his kind. He bounds up the flight of stairs leading to our back porch, nonchalantly drinks water out of the plant saucers, and digs in the dirt around the vacationing house plants. The only thing that deters him—and I am sure it is a “him”—is an enraged human being three feet away. If the human being moves off, the MIS returns to whatever mayhem he was in the process of creating.
Squirrels in general are not overly bright, but this one makes up for the intellectual deficiencies of his species by being extremely persistent.
Deer spray is relatively effective at deterring MIS, as is my daughter’s preferred solution, a spray of lavender scented all-purpose cleaner. Needless to say, the all-purpose cleaner smells better than the deer spray, which is compounded from pepper essence and rotten eggs. The problem with both substances is that they wash away when it rains. Since it has rained two out of three days recently, it is hard to keep up a spraying regimen. The squirrel is aware of this and keeps returning to our porch.
In stressful times like the present, this is enough to push me to the brink of madness.
But madness sometimes begets innovation, and that is what happened in my personal war with MIS.
My daughter is a container gardener and MIS’s destruction of her container plantings produced rage that might be even worse than mine. Shortly after the affair of the cast-concrete planters, she was listening to me complain about digging out the endless supply of onion grass from the borders. She asked if it was really “oniony” and I confirmed that onion grass is as pungent as any of its allium family relatives. “Why don’t you put it in the pots?” she said.
That was a brilliant idea. Deer and rodents do not like members of the onion family and avoid them religiously. We have so much onion grass that if we could harvest and sell it, we would be extremely wealthy. Chopping up some of the pulled-up onion grass and scattering it in the container plantings would be a great way of deterring MIS and any of his adventurous squirrel relations. Because it is not a spray, it will not wash off in the rain.
I have started the onion grass campaign, which I hope will help me win the war with MIS. There is only one wrinkle in this clever solution—onion grass is a spring weed that disappears when hot weather sets in. Fortunately at about the same time the onion grass poops out, the catmint that grows freely in several spots in my garden needs its first pruning. Rodents and deer dislike mint family members almost as much as they dislike various onions. Substituting chopped up catmint for onion grass should continue the deterrent effect and save the container plantings.
This seems like a great natural solution to a persistent problem. An alternative natural solution is the healthy appetites of the foxes and hawks that frequent our neighborhood and the skies above it. As Tennyson said, “Nature is red in tooth and claw”, and MIS could conceivably become a menu item for one of them someday. For now I will keep harvesting the onion grass.