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Could be the camera on your phone is too good and the file is too big NHWM.
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Send, it wouldn’t upload! Should I try again? I have the latest iPhone. It’s new! I just purchased this phone.

I love the blast of color this time of year with my camellias. They are a beautiful shade of pink.

My Japanese magnolia tree is a really nice shade of deep purple. The blooms don’t last very long. I wish the blooming season was a bit longer with my tree but it is so pretty when it blooms! My tree is full of buds right now. I am excited waiting for it to bloom.

I look forward to the burst of color every year.
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Chris,

Know what you mean. Our poor plants don’t know what season it is anymore!

Our weather is crazy! One day it feels like summer, the next day, chilly.

In New Orleans we tell people if you don’t like the weather, then stick around for 20 minutes and it will change! Hahaha

I believe there is a significant change because I remember as a child my mom would pack up winter clothes when it was cool, put out summer attire. Then at the end of summer, she would pack up our summer clothes and take out the winter clothes.

No more! Now we have both seasons all year long!

Hey, I am in the south so our weather is very screwy. We barely have a spring season. We have no fall foliage, a brief winter and a long, hot humid summer!

Oh, we get a fair amount of rainfall here and let’s not speak about our hurricane season this year or I will get depressed!
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NHWM,
Did you click "SAVE?"
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I would love to see camellias and magnolia right now, but sadly will have to wait until next March in our climate. They are worth waiting for, though! Something weird is going on this November - a daffodil has just flowered in my garden today, the earliest ever, and a variety that normally comes out in February. Global warming maybe?
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Well I tried to upload a photo of my camellias for my avatar.

Boo hoo, it won’t go through! What am I doing wrong?

My camellias are blooming their hearts out! They are so pretty.

My Japanese magnolia tree will be blooming soon. It is full of buds! I love that tree. It’s about 30 years old and blooms so beautifully every year!
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Cwillie, sounds great! I always think that when you are planting bulbs you are planting hope, thinking of all those lovely flowers that will be blooming in a few months, regardless of Covid, winter, and anything else that life throws at us!
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I'm feeling rather proud of myself right now. I potted up some daffodils and crocus to force and had planned to leave them out in my garden shed but realized that by the time their 12 - 16 week chill period was over the temperatures out there were almost certainly going to be too cold 🤔. My solution? I dug a trench in my now empty flower bed, lined it with plastic, put in the pots, covered them with a piece of plywood to keep out the squirrels and covered that with the soil from the trench. Should work (I hope)!
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San Francisco is full of little staircases all over the city, much hidden and beloved. Today I ran out of stuff to do in the garden and headed to one nearby and swept, cleaned the eroding dirt off the path. Was once an old gravel pit/rock pit in this area when our 1870s building was first built. Fun to see the rock all still under there as I worked. Full of echium plants, which I love, all their conical flowers now in seed, awaiting spring rains. We are late start, only 2/10 an inch Northern CA now. Hoping not another drought to deal with, as well. We use our wash water on some of our garden; a lot of the plants like the nitrogen in our eco laundry stuff. While lots of gardens go on shut down SF is starting to send up cineraria, oxalis and so many other weedy things I think of as flowers. The Covid will soon have me gardening our streets.
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Cwillie and Needhelp, v funny about snowdrops as an icier version of a raindrop! I did of course mean the lovely winter flowers! Now stuck at home in a second UK lockdown, I've been aerating the lawn. Never done this before but am desperate to get out of the house. Squirrels have been watching me make holes all over the lawn and then dropping nuts into them. Birds have then been coming along and trying to get the food out. Not sure what this is doing to my lawn...
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Send, thanks for your suggestions.   I'm going to get some Irish Spring soap, grate it, and place it in the gutter by the squirrel entrance and exit.    I think I'll create a border for the holes using double sided tape, adding shredded soap to the exterior to keep them away.  

I'll also add it to a flap screen over the hole so I can tell if they're still getting in.

Shredded garlic and coffee grounds might be an extra treat for them.   I might spread them in the gutter near the holes.  I'll just have to remember to explain to the buyer when I sell the house why there's garlic in the gutters.

Thanks for helping with this challenging problem.
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GardenArtist,
White pepper, Cayenne, garlic, coffee grounds-all disliked by squirrels.

Squirrels can be one of the trickiest garden pests to deal with. They chomp on flower bulbs and other leaves, dig up your favorite plants, and otherwise love to wreck your garden. Protect it by grating some Irish Spring soap around your plants. Squirrels can't stand the smell of it and will stay away.
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Lol, so confused....Snowdrops? I wondered when did someone change the terminology of snow, to snowdrops? It has always been raindrops, snowflakes,
sleet, ice, and icebergs. Yeah, but, you are talking about plants, I see! What better to discuss on the 'gardening as therapy' thread! It took me awhile as I was just waking up from a nap, and outside was sunshine. It was 80 degrees, and hard to wake up!

Snowdrops are not to be confused with Snowflakes - The Snowflake is a much taller growing bulb which normally has more than one flower per stem. Snowflake petals are even, each with a green spots on the end, whereas Snowdrops have helicopter-like propellers that are green only on the inner petals.

Snow
Snow is something that Cwillie shovels in winter. Lol.

Squirrels
I know that I said I was going to be feeding the squirrels. But then a few big crows came by, and took the peanuts. Nevermore! 🦃
Please don't tell NHWM or I will have to hear more 'Quoth the Raven' stories, and I was really nervous the next day, when about 20 crows perched up high in the trees, watching me, waiting for peanuts!

Lol. 🐿🐿🐿
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I'm imagining snowdrops in January..... 😮

Oh well, at least I'm not already heavy into winter like some folks here are.
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Been spending a lot of time in the garden this week after a difficult time with my mother. Have noticed the snowdrops have started to come up already, so I am looking forward to seeing these lovely winter flowers in January.
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My camellias are really beautiful right now!
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I can't think of anywhere that our squirrels don't go, including the sidewalks.
Speaking of squirrels, I left the last partially filled paper leaf bag by my door because wind blown leaves tend to collect there and this morning I found a big hole chewed into the side of the bag. A new place to hide a nut? 😖😠
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Just a quick observation.   Yesterday I saw a squirrel with something in its mouth, but it was scurrying along the sidewalk, not the grass.  In all the years I've lived here, I've never seen a squirrel use a sidewalk like a human would.  

I'm not sure what to think of this.  Perhaps it was a neat freak squirrel and wanted to keep its feet clean?   It definitely knew its destination; it was as if it was on a trip.
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Send,

Oh my gosh! I saw The Birds at a drive in movie with my parents and brothers as a young child. Fabulous movie but I had nightmares afterwards!

I absolutely love Hitchcock films.
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Crows. Big black crows! They waited two seconds after I put the peanuts out for the squirrels. Then, when the peanuts were gone, they circled awhile, sat on the overhead wires....waiting.

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" horrors still running through my mind.
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Luckily no critters other than the occ. mouse gets in our old 1870s two flat. There are two massive oaks in back, two yards back of me; they seem to like their nests there, not in the houses. All that said, great blue heron visits, skunk lives unders the back cottage to my right, and raccoons are common visitors. Used to worry more when we had the dogs and they got skunked. It is, for the heart of San Francisco's Noe Valley area, a wild life haven. There is an old hill not far from me called Billy Goat Hill. Many hawks and now more than a few coyotes in the area as well.
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Now that is some great idea, Golden.
I know someone who could hook up their exhaust to their garage and get rid of Possums, Racoons, and then close their garage door to keep them out......

An inexpensive pest control, DIY.
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Feeding only one squirrel with a bushy tail, and only if it is friendly like "Ratatouille" was.
The ground squirrels are not fed if they come for food, and 2-3 of them fight.
Until I do not have a choice, I will feed the entertaining little critters. I was going to use a different word, lol.
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We have red squirrels in the neighbourhood. Years ago one decided to nest in the garage. I know they will chew wiring, so I tried to tempt him out by leaving food on the driveway by the open garage door. He wouldn't budge, So I thought "No more Mr. Nice Guy", and I lowered the garage door till there was just enough room for the squirrel to go under, and turned the car on so the fumes filled the garage. It is attached to the house so I made sure the house was well ventilated. It didn't take long for the squirrel to leave and I never had a squirrel in the garage again, though I see them around.
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GA, it's not for nothing that I call them tree rats. Good luck keeping them out, I hope they aren't busy chewing your wiring 😱
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It's one thing after another. I was cutting a couple of branches that had fallen from my walnut tree into firewood sized pieces and to save myself some work I figured I would just cut part way through and stomp on the branch to break it the rest of the way. That was working until the branch got a little wider (arm sized) and when I jumped on the cut the longer portion flew up and smacked me upside the face. Ow. I swear I'm getting too old for this.

(Oh, and there's a branch that recently fell just a couple of feet over onto the neighbour's property, I was going to be a good neighbour and take care of it but now... nah)
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Alva,
Against my better judgment. I am going to go ahead and feed the squirrels this winter. I used to feed "Ratatouille", but got a cat. Could not do both.
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Thank you GA, for not getting on a ladder!
It is rare that a senior knows just when to slow down.
And the temptation to 'do it anyway' is great.

It has been a challenge to accept my own limitations,
and my that of my husband's.
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I'm glad to see that squirrels (those crafty little devils!) are being discussed.  I've had problems with them at my father's house for years.    They chewed through the fascia and got into rooms on that end of the house.

I hired a squirrel catcher to remove them; his traps didn't catch the kind that we thought were in the house, but I think the ones he caught were actually the culprits.   The problem then was that I couldn't get a contractor to repair the fascia, and it was a ladder job which I didn't want to tackle.   So now they're back.

Has anyone had similar problems, and if so, how did you eventually get them out of the house?  I do have plans based on what's worked so far:   painters' tape deters them; that's kept them out  of other places they've chewed up.  I may use it on the exterior holes, and add some hand sanitizers/handiwipes as I've found that also deters them.

I do have to make sure they're out of the house though before I seal them in.   The critter catcher I hired used a trap, but I'd have to maneuver and set it up while on a ladder, which I'm not willing to do.    I'm no longer comfortable working on ladders, especially on the outside when the ladder will be sitting on pavement.
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What I recently learned from our Wildlife Rescue is that a baby squirrel gets kicked from the nest if it has a tail deformity. Apparently they "communicate" with their tails, so all that jerky wagging and flagging isn't accidental. Usually you are supposed to leave a baby squirrel at bottom of tree for rescue by parent, but in this case no parent returned. So baby will be raised as a little zoo squirrel.
One of our squirrels regularly comes off the deck into our house for his nuts if we don't deliver on time. We call him Larry. After my cousin who's a little "squirrely."
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