Bill Moeller Commentary: More Strange Tales From the Garden

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Last week’s column about strange things happening in my garden brought a response before it was even printed! The person who suggests corrections to my spelling, grammar, and punctuation (especially my punctuation), and whose sandpaper smooths the ragged edges of my sometimes violent and/or virulent prose, emailed me photographic evidence of at least a half dozen plants in her garden that are already showing full-fledged, unseasonable blooms.

In addition, a new friend recently presented me with a lavender plant that also had buds about to bloom.   Is this proof that we’re returning to a climate where mastodons roam and palm trees provide shade? Once again, is the arctic ice melting?  Are we, now, recreating an atmosphere once created by active volcanoes and a prehistoric visit from a comet or two? I’m not complaining — much of the rest of our country is frozen in.

And then, I look at my own garden again and find that my tulips and daffodils have already pushed a lot more than their heads above ground. Besides that, there’s a bloom on a rhododendron shrub in the parking lot of the bank I use.

While I’ve loved working in my yard during the spell of nice weather we’ve had recently, I have one disturbing situation to report: the nectar level in my hummingbird feeders hasn’t gone down for at least two weeks. A friend of mine, Jim Smith, has many more feeders than I do and a call to him indicated the birds are just not feeding at this time of year. I’ll give my feeders a good scrubbing, one at a time, refill them and see what happens.

Speaking of feeders, I like to feed peanuts to squirrels. I know, there are those who consider them to be just another member of the rat family. The problem is, that whenever I toss some on the ground, some Scrub Jays zoom in and carry them off, ostensibly to bury them for winter feeding. Russ Mohney once told me that, while Stellar Jays can remember exactly where they planted something, Scrub Jays have very little spatial memory.

Here is my solution to the dilemma: I went to Lincoln Creek Lumber and bought what’s called a “4-inch diameter semi-rigid vent duct”, that will stretch out to 24 inches in length and can be held to the ground with a couple of rocks inside.  Squirrels can easily retrieve peanuts that are tossed into it but Scrub Jays won’t go inside after the nuts.  Problem solved.



I intended to devote this paragraph to a certain national figure, but a columnist for The New York Times already expressed my thought in the first paragraph of his recent column: “When President Trump made a rare journey to the U. S. Capitol last week...”.  You get my gist.  So, let’s turn our attention to Tim Eyman, instead. He’s resurrected his initial proposal to lower automobile taxes (he must still drive a Lexus). Does anyone consider he might have a conflict of interest by owning a company established to hire people to collect petition signatures? I’ll repeat a statement I’ve made in a former literary sermon that the practice of hiring paid petition gatherers should be prohibited in this state.

And one final bit before I end this column. Seattle has now been assured of another professional sport to root for on a national level-a hockey team. They’ll undoubtedly conduct a contest to name it and I can think of no better name than the Seattle Orcas. Doesn’t it ring a nice little bell?  Don’t forget, you read it here first.

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Bill Moeller is a former entertainer, mayor, bookstore owner, city council member, paratrooper and pilot living in Centralia. He can be reached at bookmaven321@comcast.net.