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6 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | MAY 2019 By Sharon Cates, Resident I love spring. I don't have to look at a calendar to know the season has arrived. The bright yellow daffodils in my yard herald the change. It amazes me how strong they are. Bulbs planted in the fall know the right time to push their leaves through four inches of soil and two inches of bark mulch to reach the daylight. Each year they multiply. During rain, they bow their heads, raising them again when the sun shines. Beautiful. We moved from a rural part of San Diego county to Hemet three years ago. Our two-thirds of an acre in Ramona became too much to maintain and of course, our age had a lot to do with the move. Here, we've found that even a smaller property requires landscape attention and after three years, I can understand why so many SDV residents have rocks and water-wise plants in their front yards. I'm not ready to go there yet. Ramona should be called gopher heaven. The little beasts are everywhere and the larger your property, the more room they have to multiply. We fought the little underground rodents with traps, smoke bombs or poison pellets daily. My neighbor thought he had the answer. On the weekends, he would attach a hose to the exhaust pipe of his car and put the other end down the gopher holes in his yard. We could hear the engine running at least 10 minutes each time. His method just drove the beasts into our yard. Their mounds of dirt popped up everywhere. How disheartening to look out my kitchen window and see my JFK rose bush drop over rootless. It was war. One day, while planting a new rosebush with the root ball enclosed in a chicken wire basket (a recommendation from a local vintner), I saw one of the beasts coming under my fence and running across our yard. I was sure it was a pregnant female as her sides were as wide as her length. No way was I going to become a birthing facility. I didn't hesitate, shovel in hand, to chase that rodent back under the fence with the hope she would succumb to a carbon monoxide demise. I recall a spring with unusually heavy rains that soaked the Ramona soil. In the back part of our property, I was checking the progress of a blossoming peach tree when I sunk with both feet into the muddy tunnel of a gopher's lair. It was impossible to pull my shoes out of the tackiness with my feet still inside them. Leaving my shoes, I walked to the house in stocking feet and cursed the little beasts with every step. Two days after we moved into our Solera Diamond Valley home, our dog Max found a gopher hole in the lawn. "Oh my God," I cried, "They've followed me!" Beauty & the Beasts