Pests - also known as "nature"

Well, so far we've kept the deer at bay with the fence. And the birds haven't been much trouble, because as long as we protect sprouting seeds (lesson learned immediately on the first batch of sunflowers), they don't do much damage. In fact, the seed-eaters among them really do appear to be thinning out the weed seeds germinating between the more established plants. The biggest problem so far have been the ubiquitous gophers. At first we though they were just around the house, but mounds started popping up everywhere. Including the garden.

I know from past experiences with mice and rats (and gophers) that it is self-defeating to live-trap and relocate cosmopolitan, human-adapted rodent species like these - if you seriously need them to be gone. (If you have one mouse in the house and want it outside, by all means, "Havahart" it.) Neither of us likes killing animals, but as they have spread out, it has become clear that the garden and other plantings will sustain unacceptable damage. In my search for a solution, I could find very few sources that had reliable methods for repelling or otherwise deterring the creatures.

Much of our time in the evenings of the past couple of weeks has been spent in trying to master scary-looking but surprisingly easy to set wire gopher traps. We had no luck at all for a while. Matt managed to shoot one with the pellet gun after stalking it in the yard. Finally, today, I successfully trapped one. The traps are set again, and hopefully soon we'll be able to thin out the population enough to live with the remaining few.