The voles are just plain rude. They have an annoying habit of picking a big plant to eat for the winter. They move in, set up house, then proceed to eat the house down and turn it into an insulated basement dwelling.
Damn varmints attacked one of my evergreen clumping bamboos. I don't mind sharing, but these concentrated and often lethal winter feeding habits suck.
I saw Button hunting here several times and assumed he was on top of things. Then the bamboo clump started looking a bit off from a distance. A closer inspection revealed the advanced state of destruction.
It's one thing to eat the top of the house down, but voles are quite fond of the roots. That is where all the energy is stored. They will take the foundation too.
This is one reason you don't won't piles of leaves to clump up around the base of plants. They provide good cover for invaders to move in. I hope I stopped it in time before the roots were all gone. They have been exposed.
The two smaller bamboo at this end of the garden have been ever so slow to grow. They get less light and have less soil than the much larger grouping. I finally got tired of waiting and planted two rooted rhododendron stem cuttings just upslope.
Even the larger bamboos have not reached the size I envisioned after all these years. Being a gardener, I read the tag, then added time and two more feet.
The bigger bamboo is about seven feet high, working on eight, assuming the damn voles don't move in and eat the whole house down. One year they froze to the ground and had to start the process of stacking up height all over.
It's always something.
There has been no snow in this winter storm. There may have been some freezing rain. It all melted in the rain.
It's been an odd indecisive winter, circling around thirty two, not knowing which way to go. I'm not even sure what it is that is falling from the fog right now. It could turn to snow.
I was out there moving slow until the drizzle turned thick and steady. Drizzle does not seem to induce house cleaning. I think it takes snow.
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Ha we had 2" of snow. No housekeeping done here. The damn voles killed our huge locust tree. They ate half of the roots on that big ole locust. Made me mad and sad. They can be so destructive.
I keep expecting a good long spell of winter to show up for house cleaning. It better. I have the bigger house next door to do. Damn voles!!
We have clumping bamboo. Hard freezes burn it so it is the middle of summer before it totally greens up.
Sallysmom this is Fargesia rufa bamboo. It is cold hardy and evergreen, weathers depending to about 0. The time it froze was a late freeze after it had started the new spring shoots.
Mine is Bambusa multiplex 'Fernleaf'. When it gets down to around 0 degrees F it will die to the ground. At about 6, it will defoliate.
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