I suppose every place has some type of animal that makes gardening a challenge. There are biting and stinging ants, deer, gophers, squirrels, rabbits, kangaroos, moles, and there will always be some that can't be stopped and so must be tolerated. Here in Tasmania we have brush-tail possums. They are an arboreal marsupial that can climb anything and will eat one bite out of every flower and piece of fruit in the garden. I once asked a horticulturist if there was anything that possums didn't eat and he said, "Garden gnomes, but only the concrete type because they will rip right through those plaster ones." He wasn't joking either.

UHM...........I am sorry I am not familiar with any of your posts and you call yourself 'gardenapprentice' so I'll ask and hopen not to offend you. By buds were you by chance referring to the red objects hanging on dogwoods now? If so, these are the berries and it won't impact your bloom next year. They will, however, also eat buds.......so which got 'et'? LOL

Milton: My husband claimed that at uni, he reached a detente with a family of racoons by giving them part of his sandwich. The family (it's always three of them with the creepy grunting in the dark at night) we now have in the yard do not seem to bother anything, not even the vegetable garden. However, I did have to boot them out from under my wood shop using---sit down for this one---bars of Irish Spring soap shoved generously throughout. The odor is unbearable even to me; and they are more sensitive to it than I am. If that had not worked, I was prepared to drill holes into the floor boards and empty bottles of the same rancid cologne/fragrance oil thing that the vet recommended for my cat who is allergic to bug bites. The substance is so vile to my sinuses, I would have needed to put on my respirator mask just approaching the shop. Kev: Yikes. They like a lot of stuff. We have squirrels here, too, but the brown ones but they only topple pots and do not seem interested in anything I am growing. Also, the tree guy once counted 4 walnut trees and 6 oak trees growing around our property so they scoff at my plants. So caging is not an option? Or drones.

Millions of big-leaf maple seedlings come up most springs, only for the vast majority to vanish the same summer. If, on the other hand you have a Norway maple seeding in there that could be problematic. Because on wooded sites at least these apparently do not tend to die off in this area. At least in certain particular locations that must suit them, resulting in them starting to take them over - as has long been happening elsewhere in the northern US.