The Squirrels Are Back

It’s another mast year for the scarlet oak in the front garden.

(Whenever I write “front garden” I feel pretty fancy!)

And mast year? That just means it’s a year when it has decided to produce a lot of acorns, more than in a non-mast or normal year.

This scarlet oak, Quercus coccinea, is a pretty fast grower, in my opinion, when it comes to oak trees. This one was planted in 2011 and is already quite tall. I’ve had it professionally pruned once and will have someone do some more pruning on it later this fall/winter.

But what, you may ask, has this to do with squirrels?

Well, thanks for asking!

When I saw all those acorns on the ground, I was concerned because I thought I would see squirrels all over the place. It’s like a grocery store has opened in a food desert, and all the food is free. Where are the squirrels?

I don’t know where they were, but they are back. Now whenever I go out front, I see one or two run away across the street back to the woods behind those houses, which is a good place for them to live. They can come here for food, but I don’t need them to live here.

And yes, the squirrels will be burying many of the acorns around my garden and likely in neighbors’ lawns and landscapes, and then forgetting about them, so we can all expect to see some oak tree seedlings this coming spring.

Thanks for reading to the end. If you’d like to read more about wildlife in my garden, I wrote an update in early September that you might find interesting.