by Barbara Stanley

Created on: June 01, 2008   Last Updated: November 18, 2011

I have been gardening for over thirty years, most of those years in South Mississippi. Now, I garden in the North Georgia Mountains. There is a difference. The rather small difference between Mississippi and Georgia flower gardening is called a red squirrel. These squirrels create bold differences in the design of the gardens. 

We had squirrels where we lived in Mississippi, but they never paid much attention to what I was doing, as I was doing it, in my garden. Mostly, the squirrels dropped huge pine cones on our heads as we walked beneath the trees they were playing in. I am fairly sure that I heard them snicker a time or two. My son, Mike, shot at a few of them whenever he got into his pickup truck to leave for work and found they had chewed through the wiring again. I know for sure that squirrels are among the most intelligent critters. I have seen them perform feats of daring, cunning, and just plain lunacy to get at a bird feeder.

I knew that tulips would be one of the first bulbs I planted in my flower garden once we moved to the mountains where the winters were cold and long enough to produce tulips of brilliant color. I had seen them blooming all across lawns and yards every time we drove to the mountains on vacation.

I had tried to grow tulips in the hot, humid rain forest we called South Mississippi. I should not have been surprised when the bulbs never broke ground. Hope springs eternal, though, so I planted them anyway. I supposed the bulbs had rotted and just planted daffodils in their place. The daffodils were beautiful in their waves of pale to orange-lemon colors and hues. I received many compliments from neighbors.

Once we moved to the Georgia Mountains, I couldn't wait to have a flower garden like those I had seen during the spring as we would pass through. I had bought some red bulbs, a lot of pink ones, a few white ones, and a bunch of yellow tulips. My husband prepared the soil and I planted the bulbs -  all sixty of them. What I did not know, but soon learned, was just how much squirrels loved tulip bulbs. It would seem that tulip bulbs are considered a delicacy for squirrels in "these here parts".

I had labored for six hours planting those bulbs. Bright and early the next morning, with coffee in hand, I gazed from my kitchen window at all the cute little squirrels holding sometime round in both tiny little hands as they munched away. "Hey, Mike, come look at this and tell me

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