Tips to Scare Off Varmints in A Summer Cottage Container Garden and more

No way am I going to let the “invaders” eat my tomatoes and taste my basil before I do! Trying to find a way to scare off garden pests is becoming a bit of an obsession….Moosie’s reaction to my suggestion of possibly buying fox urine is hilarious…hope you enjoy my storytellling and light-hearted version of our predicament.Also included in this video are some clips of a fun family birthday party that Moosie and I attended on Sunday for two great grands .Enjoy! Thank you all for your tips and suggestions! It will be interesting to see what works!❤️

Well, this is what happened to my basil. But now I have a snake in there. If they want to go back and finish it off, well, hello, my friends. I have been a woman on a mission. I think you might know by now that I am rather a determined person that when I have a problem, I stick with it until I have found a solution. And right now, the topmost problem that Musy and I have is squirrels and rodents and perhaps some rabbits in our garden. I have a lot of herbs that I use almost every day for my cooking, but my tomatoes are my pride and joy. And as you know from the last video, we have had varmments and we have determined that we have seen ground squirrels. Now, they’re different here in California from the tree squirrels that she went out one morning and there was a squirrel actually sitting in the back of the garden behind one of the pots and he turned his head around and his eyes were as big as this and he looked straight at me and didn’t move. Can you believe that? So we we have a problem and I am very distracted by it as is Moosey. Of course his ideas are different from mine. Mine are are running toward um are the distractions and how to save particularly my plants. I have lost completely and I’ve taken pictures for you. Each day I see certain things being eaten up a little bit more. They seem to come out late in the afternoon for some reason or other, but but on the other hand, I’ve seen them pretty much most of the day. Now, I want to thank you so much for all your suggestions. I just couldn’t get over all the creative suggestions that you had as to how to repel squirrels, rabbits, and rodents from the garden, and how to protect my plants. And it ran the gamut from um everything from uh whirly gigs. Now, this is this is how I’ve been spending my time. I’ve been shopping, ladies. Not so much for fashion, although I’ll tell you about that later. I did have a Ross haul that I will fit into all this one of these days. So, somebody suggested these would chase them away. So, I did make a trip to Dollar Tree. Somebody suggested bounce the uh dryer sheets that you put around in the bottoms of plants. I have it all. Somebody even suggested I go out and buy some inexpensive uh green houses. Well, there’s a limit to what I will do or what I can afford to do because I’ve spent so much on the plants that are disappearing. And quite frankly, all this stuff, well, at Dollar Tree is not too bad. But I do have some funny stories that I thought I will just tell you for enjoyment purposes to this whole garden varmment saga. And um I think you might enjoy them. I’m getting a kick out of some of them myself, quite frankly. Now, I’m dressed as a gardener today because, believe it or not, I did buy another tomato plant yesterday. I I am the eternal optimist besides being a whole bunch of other things. And I thought, I’m not going to live through the summer without tomato plants. So, this time I bought one called the Whopper something or other giant tomato plant. I have some big beefs and big boys and things, but part of what I’ve been doing at least the past week to save what I have left of my basil. Well, they ate two basil plants right down to the dirt gone. But I did uh I do have a green pepper plant that is doing well right now. I have another basil that I bought and I have several tomato plants. And I’ve I’m keeping a whole bunch of things right by my front door outside the door, which is far enough away from the garden to hopefully keep them away. Now, it’s not guaranteed because I did place a a basil plant up this end toward the patio up on my little stool and they found that and ate that completely. And it took them about three or four days. I just left it because it was so far gone. and they eventually finished it up. So, these little critters are destructive and um I’m gonna beat them one way or another. So, as you can see, I am taking your advice in many areas, at least the ones that I can afford to do and um that I think Moosey and I can handle with with the help, by the way, of Aiden. Um he he’s been a big help, too. Now, this morning, Moosey felt that one of the bird feeders that he filled up yesterday was eaten up completely, and that was a bird house about this big, and he put about that much seed in it yesterday, and it’s gone. So, we might have somebody that’s eating the bird seed. So, we have reduced the number of feeders, which is kind of not fair for the birds because we figured we had quite a a bit of of uh bird feeders out there feeding all different birds. We had a lot of birds, but Moosey said, “Well, let’s see if we just maybe take away one of the niger seed feeders and one of this feeders.” We still have two hummingbird feeders out there, so we’re doing okay there. But, um, anything that we think can work. So, yesterday morning, I was my day to go on the hunt. And I figured, well, I’ll start off at Dollar Tree and see what I can get in the way of these. Trying to keep my my expenses down. and see what I could find in the way of of some of your other suggestions. Well, I was lucky because I found seven of these. I was looking for about more than a dozen to plant all over the garden just so that they would get scared away. And in the little breezes, these things supposedly work. So, thank you for this. We’re going to put these in today. Um, also I have heard about this one before and um, one of you kind ladies suggested this. So I found several of these at the Dollar Tree store for $1.25. I think I bought four of them. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I think what I will do, they’re drier sheets that fit and make your clothes smell good, but evidently the squirrels and the rodents do not like the smell of these. So, uh, I I think I might maybe cut them in some strips and tie them on maybe the plant holders or what. Oh, I also bought a jug of peppermint oil and I was spraying some of the plants with that a couple days ago. That didn’t seem to work. Although I have what did I pay $20 for a jug of of that. Now, some of the of the other things that I found at Dollar Tree were interesting, and I looked at everything. Now, look at this little thing. I thought, you know, this was in the cat and the doggy aisle at the Dollar Tree. And I thought, would you think that a squirrel, if he saw this little fellow sitting in one of my tomato pots, wouldn’t he be afraid when he looked at those eyes looking back at them? Well, I could only find one of them. Not that maybe he’d even step on that and jump down over the hill. So, I only found one of these. So, I have this. I have these. I did quite well at Dollar Tree. I have my my bounce. I have um a whole bunch of of what? Oh, let me get this. Anything that I thought was sparkly would chase them away. So, I saw all these little um things that you hang all over the place for decorations, and I thought I could hang these up on them. It might chase birds away too, but but hanging these around pots and on the fence. Any is many of you suggested anything like this that that the wind might blow would scare them away before they had a chance to chew chew on anything. So, I followed that hint for a while. And since it was the a day or two after Fourth of July, I ran into some of these. Now, I don’t even know what these are. I think they’re you just sit them around on a table. These might scare them away. I bought a couple of these. I even bought some wrappings. Anything sparkly that might move in in the um in the breezes might help. Can you see? Look at all this stuff. As you can see, I became very obsessed about all this. One way or another, I’m going to get them. I even saw this which I thought number one was cute but anything that sparkled was cute. Now you could go cra I always do go crazy at Dollar Trees or 99 cent stores. So So these are going in the garden. Now my garden is probably going to look like something that the cat dragged in when I get finished with all this. But it sure is going to look pretty and sparkly. I don’t know who else it might scare away, but we’ll see. Now, one of the other, and this is funny, one of the other suggestions was uh snakes, rodents, and all of those bunny rabbits and everybody are afraid of snakes. So, someone said, “Why don’t you get some of those uh play snakes, those rubber snakes, and put those in some of the pots?” And I thought, that’s a great idea. And I thought I had seen them in um uh Michaels. So, my next stop after I left the Dollar Tree was Michaels. One of these play snakes. In fact, they were both $22.95. Well, I didn’t believe it when I looked at it. Why would they charge that much for a play snake? I thought, well, I can’t buy this. It’s got to be wrong. $22.95 for a snake. You know what? I could probably make my own snakes. All I’d have to do is to buy some clay and rub the clay around and then get out my paints and paint them to look like uh rattlesnakes and everything. I thought that’s what I’m going to do. So, I started to to look around, but I put the snake in my cart because I didn’t believe the price. So, I was going to buy the snake if he turned out to be $2 instead of $22, but I I did manage to pick up a very heavy thing of molding clay, which I can use for anything. But anyway, this cost me $8.95. So, this was my alternative in case the snake turned turned out to be a $2 snake. Well, when I got up the front, she said, “Oh, yes, ma’am. this snake is on sale. And I thought, “Oh, great. I won’t have to buy the clay.” Well, it was on sale for $11.95. So, I put the snake back and I bought the clay, which is all I bought at Michaels. So, then I had to get some things for Moosey at Lowe’s. I had to do a little bit of shopping at Walmart. And of course, I started I went into the garden place at W at Walmart and I saw that the tomato plants were still there. And this one tomato plant just called me. It was big and it had the the most lovely little yellow buds on it and it said it was whopper size tomatoes. So, I bought that. Now, it was a big pot, too. Normally I buy the little ones and start, but I’m getting a late start now here, right? Because I’ve lost some time trying to to get rid of these. My plants that I bought two weeks ago should have been this tall by now, but they got eaten up. So, I did buy one of these nice big 9.95 tomato plants. And I thought, “Oh, I hope all this works.” So, so as I uh was checking out, I did buy some food. I needed some food and things. And um as I was checking out, it was near the children’s toy, the checkout was sort of near the children’s toy area. And you know, Walmart has aisles and aisles of toys. So, I walked in there up and down looking for snakes. And I thought, there’s got to be snakes around. I know. I’ve seen them in the past. Walked up and down three aisles. And I My legs were starting to get tired. My energy was going by now. I’m on my third store and I still had two more to go to. I had to go to Lowe’s for Moosey. I saw a young boy with his Walmart jacket on. He was walking up and down the aisles. I said, “Do you know if you have any snakes, toy snakes anywhere?” And he laughed. He said, “What? Yeah.” I said, “But I need them for my garden. I have to chase away squirrels and rodents.” And I said, “Someone suggested I get some snakes.” So he laughed. He said, “Yeah, I think I know where the snakes are.” And I thought, “Wow, in in all these aisles, this this great kid knows where it is.” So he took me to an aisle and down on the bottom shelf on in a box about this big were probably two dozen snakes. And I said, “Oh my gosh.” I said, “Are they cheap?” He said, “Yeah, they’re $120.” I said, “Oh.” So he took the box up and guess what I bought? Can you believe this? I bought five snakes. So, we started looking at the snakes together and I said, “Okay, now you’ve done great by you’ve done great so far, my friend, but tell me now, what snake would the uh squirrel or the rodent be afraid of?” He said, “Well, probably a rattlesnake.” So, let’s find a rattlesnake. So, he found this guy. Look at these snakes. Now, I I tell you, nobody hates snakes more than I do. I will run to the other side of the earth if I see a snake anywhere. A real snake. I don’t like them. I get shivers when I look at snakes on um in movies. I just don’t like them. But I’m on a mission right now. These little snakes. So, we looked through the pile and he found me some snakes. He said, “No, you need some with different colors, too.” So, I had some uh green ones. I have yellow ones. And they’re very scary. You see their tongue is ready to get those squirrels. And I have a bunch of snakes. So, as you can see, I’m in my garden overalls. Moosey is already out there this morning and um I have some work to do. Whatever are you doing? I’m having fun. Number one. I’m putting the bounce around and I’m doing these, you know, for a gal that hates snakes. This is This isn’t bad. I got a couple in my tomato pots already. You’re scaring yourself. I know. But do you see my whirly gigs going around and around? Look at that. Isn’t that something? A little breeze going and away they go. I think that’s a great idea. Did you see the snake up there? Zero zero in on that guy that I put up here. Oh, the one that’s in um hanging in the air. Yeah, him up there. That’s scary, man. Isn’t he? And I have one down here. Where else should I put one? Can’t tell you. Might be a ground squirrel, huh? Maybe down there somewhere. Okay. I can’t get in there. Can’t. Well, this is what happened to my basil. And it was a nice big fluffy one. And I did put some of these bits and pieces of geranium in there because I thought that scent would chase them away. But now I have a snake in there. or if they want to go back and finish it off. We’ll see. Now, before I end all these rabbit hole stories, and I hope that you’re enjoying this. I mean, it’s pure just storytelling, but it’s true. Also, someone suggested that you could buy fox urine, and I thought, “Oh my gosh, can you believe that?” I I’m sure you know I had mentioned the fact that I was so sad that Shemu was gone too for many reasons because he was our pet. But also I had none of these problems when Shemu was here. And this all happened probably about a week 10 days after Shemu left us. And you know what happened to poor Shemu? Well, I thought to myself, you know, he did capture quite a few things and would bring them to me as presents, but they say that just a cat on a property and he’s he was with us for 14 years marks his territory. And so Shamu’s urine was all over the place, I’m sure. And that deterred them. And um Colleen and I were talking um a week or so ago and uh we talked about the possibility of having a feral cat around. Someone even suggested you can buy feral cats at a shelter or something or or other people actually raise feral cats particularly for um purposes like this. I I just amazed some of the stories that I’ve heard. So Moosey and I were talking about this and I said, “Um, what? Maybe I should look see where I could find some fox urine and try and and get that. Maybe I could pick that up at the feed store or someplace.” So I could see a sparkle in Moosey’s eyes with this conversation going here. And um I said, “Well, why don’t I just look it up on um on Amazon?” So I did. I looked it up on Amazon while he and I were sitting outside and I I saw, believe it or not, I typed in fox urine and it came up and lo and behold, they sell fox urine. So, I went went down and I started seeing Foxorn and I saw the prices and the ounces and whatever. I couldn’t believe this. Foxarn 2422.95 for 16 ounces. I couldn’t believe that. Now, 16 ounces, first of all, doesn’t go very far. Why would people spend that much money for just to a little bit of fox urine? So I looked at Moosey. His response was, “Wow.” He said, “I’d sell you some urine for a lot less than that.” Well, that was the end of that. I thought, “Okay, now now we’re now we’re getting crazy.” So my friends, thank you for all your suggestions. I think I better end with that. Now, uh, one of the other best suggestions too that I thought was great was to get some netting and to put it over especially the tomato plants because I do have those rings, you know, those tomato um um I forget the word for it and you could drape something, but I couldn’t find that anywhere. am going to get busy and see what I can do. I’m sure Moosey is going to have a few laughs as I’m out there tying up sparkles and things all over the place, putting snakes around and trying to save my garden. Thank you for all your help and I will keep you posted as to how we’re doing on all this. And it’s going to be kind of a a a contest in a way, isn’t it? To see whose suggestion is is uh the one that works. Now, I don’t know how I’ll know whether the snakes are going to keep these things away, whether it’s my nice little panda bear. Is he going to do the job? Or is it going to be my whirly gigs and all the sparkles? Who knows? Oh, or my peppermint oil, which I don’t even know where that is right now. Oh, that’s outside. So, let’s see who wins in the game of of helping Nanny to keep herbs, particularly I still have flowers left. There’s certain plants that they don’t go for. I tried the geranium uh deterrent thing, but they still ate plants where I placed leaves and and cutings of geraniums. So, that one didn’t work. So, it’s a game of hit or miss. Wish me luck, my friends. Hope you enjoyed my stories. So, actually Musy and I have been doing other things besides chasing squirrels and uh rodents and everything away from the garden. We did uh have a lovely day yesterday late in the afternoon after I got home from all my shopping. Uh we went over to Bridget’s house. So Bridget is our oldest granddaughter of 20 grandchildren. She’s the oldest daughter of our son Billy. And um two of her girls, Brinley and Brooke, were had birthdays last week, but Brooke was away at camp during her birthday, and the family was out at the river in the desert for Brinley’s birthday. So, she decided to have a family gathering yesterday and um we went over to that and Chef had been cooking ribs and it was a great day. All the little kids were swimming and the teenagers were swimming and having fun and playing um basketball and all sorts of things and lots of lots of um of grandkids. And Moosey is our new little Charlie, my two little sweethearts. She said the ribs have been cooking since noon time. The lineup is there for the ribs and the rest of the meal. Yummy. I understand you were babysitting your horsey the other night with the fireworks. What? Live photo right here. Oh, strip down his back like the real hair, you know. [Music] So excited to see her. You don’t look like a granny, that’s for sure. Beautiful. Are you going to take it apart or say it for a ride? Bye. Where’s he going? We just had a great time. We stayed a couple hours. Everybody brought different um appetizers, eats. We ended up making ice cream sundaes. She had spreads out with all sorts of toppings and and it was a a a great day. So, we didn’t get home till about 8:00 at night. And it was a nice break from the total concentration of and and just our brains just going crazy thinking about squirrels and rats and bunny rabbits. So, as Moosey always says, just being around family just keeps his spirits going for weeks afterward. And it’s true. It really is true. These are the ones that I’m protecting by the front door. I have all my big beef tomatoes that I’ve bought recently. These are the ones that I take in the house every once in a while. I even have some buds on my pepper plants. And this basil is thriving. So, terrible place to keep these. But this is my new tomato plant. Look at that. This is great. This is my big whopper. Well, I’m in from the garden doing my deed for the morning. I do have to do some work in here for a change. Got to attack my kitchen. We had a great day yesterday. So, didn’t do much here all day long. I do in the next video want to show you my Ross haul. Couple of days ago, I just decided I had to get out of the house. My spirits were low. Um, I did have some energy. I went out early in the morning and I needed some new summer tops. casual ones and ones maybe to go to a family event. Some something cool but cute at the same time. But I bought about four or five really cute tops. One of them I wore to Bridget’s house yesterday for the family birthday party. And this one also, which was on sale for $5.99 at Ross. And it’s a light sort of a crepey um gauze type with some ruffles on the sleeves. Probably will go with anything. It’s not a color that I normally buy, but I love it. And it goes with one of my new garden jumpsuits. A real flowery something. I was going to wear that this morning, but I tried it on. The pants are too long. So, I do have some sewing jobs. So, I hope you enjoyed the video today. Another Gabby video with some funny stories. though maybe it would bring your spirits up a little bit. And it just shows how you can become so obsessed with something, the lengths that you’ll go to to find a solution. And unfortunately, that’s my thing. So, thanks so much for watching, my friends. Do think about subscribing. We’d love to have you here with us. Love you all, my friends. Thank you for all your wishes and definitely thank you for all those great comments you made about doing things to save my garden. And I’ll keep you up to date as to how we’re doing. I just love the whirly gigs and love those snakes. I’m going back and getting more. Bye for now. Love you all and God bless us all.