How to Keep Cats Out of a Garden

Let me preface this post by saying I'm an animal lover and I own a cat.

That said, I moved into my current house just about a year ago and I have a feline frenzy in my backyard. This is due to my neighbor's flock of cats that roam the 'hood.

So anyway, this year I put together my first garden ever and it actually turned out looking pretty decent. And it also happens to be cat poop central. :-( Thus ensued my ongoing battle with keeping the cats at bay. Here's what I've tried:

• Sprinkling cayenne pepper around in the hope that it would be offensive to their noses. Good idea in theory, but it washes away in the rain, and isn't exactly cheap to spread it everyday. Verdict: No go.
• Spraying the cats with a water gun. This was actually recommended by my neighbor, who said that if her cats bug me, spray with water. This tactic does indeed work, and it is indeed a fun little hobby, but only when I'm around and see them out back. Not coincidentally, the excrement shows up when I wake up in the morning. Verdict: Marginally effective.
• Putting up thorny branches. I had the idea that maybe if I plugged some thorny branches in the ground, they'd stay away because they would be a nuisance. I didn't have many branches to work with, but managed to secure one particular area that was often frequented. Verdict: No apparent success.
• Forks in the ground. I just put plastic forks in the ground with the tines sticking up to keep them from walking around there. Verdict: Too early to tell, but I can't see how this would fail to work. The main downside being that it looks really bizarre.

I've read online several other solutions, none of which appeal to me. For example, I have no interest in spraying a chemical around my yard to keep the cats away... this kind of solution does not appeal to me in the least due to the potential environmental effects. Nor does buying an automatic sprayer that is available, for 50+ bucks that sprays anything that crosses its sensor. That's getting a bit pricey and a bit psycho. Plus if anything's going to be shooting water, then it's me!

But if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them! It's time to end the litter box trend and I'm all ears for new, environmentally sound, affordable, humane, and preferably un-noticeable solutions. Maybe I should just move...

Money Does Grow on Trees

I recently became a first-time homebuyer of a house with a cozy little townhouse complete with a mini-backyard. The innards of the house are coming along and shaping up nicely. A few odds and ends need doing, but overall, everything is settled.

The backyard, however, is a bit of a disaster. I've got some overgrown bushes and trees that take up too much space for the small area and other than that, just a spread of patchy grass covers the rest of the ground. Pretty basic and uninspiring, really.

As a nature lover, I relish the idea of planting a more engaging yard, but I have no real experience of ever doing this. It's somewhat intimidating when I go on different sites and/or listen to pros tell me the steps and upkeep of planting a garden.

But just when I start to think about ditching my goal of planting a garden, I start getting bombarded with catalogs in the mail. Gardening catalogs with bright, exciting flowers, luscious green plants, and eye-pleasing formations just so happen to find their way into my hands. And my brain.

All of a sudden I'm looking at these catalogs thinking-- yeah, I can do this. And the prices are reasonable, only a few bucks for a packet of seeds, a few more bucks for a delivered plant, and a few more bucks for the tools of maintaining a garden. These catalogs are marketing miracles! I'd be a fool not to start a garden, right?

Well, whether or not I forge ahead and build this backyard bonanza remains to be seen. But it's plain to see that money really does grow on trees... if you happen to be a plant catalog producer...