You could water your container plants by hand to keep the hose water from splattering the dirt all over. By watering your container plants "slowly" by hand until the soil absorbs it, will keep the water from pushing the soil or the sides. As for what do grow in them now, you could purchase plants at a nursery that are well established. Keeping "delicate containers" such as wicker baskets, straw hats, etc. "clean," if you have no fond memories of what you're using for containers, then I wouldn't worry about it and just know that they are going to get damaged to the point you might have to throw them away at the end of the season.

My thought is that this is the baby of the first raccoon. They follow Mamma on the same trail and even continue the route as adults. I think it could have happened on any of the arbors but it's just a high-traffic route for the raccoons. For example, the ones in my yard all prefer one side of my fence over the other due to it being darker and quieter. At least you found and were able to rescue both of them. Thank you for doing that!

All of my dry goods go into either these: Lock and Locks or these: Click Clacks I found a set of large lock lock (or some knock off equivalent) at Costco that will hold 5-10+lbs of flour, rice, cereal or sugar when I buy in bulk. I use the round cannisters of various sizes to store sugar, flour, rice, pasta, beans, bread crumbs or anything else that the moths used to get into. I also occasionally put out some of the those sticky moth traps. The traps have been empty for awhile now. The only problems I've really had after using the containers: -flour mites: even in the container I got an infestation of flour mites. As some indicated, this means they were in the flour to begin with. The nice thing was that the mites were contained in the bin so I just had to dump it all and clean the bin and they weren't all over everything else in my dry storage -beetles: when I buy bird seed for my birds it often has beetles and/or eggs. If I don't freeze these first they'll multiply and become evident in a short period of time. However, the containers WILL prevent flour moths and beetles from getting into your dry goods if they aren't already in them.

Older thread, but I'm with papayamon. Electric fence is the way to go, especially since you have an existing fence. Just add the electric system onto it. The electric system kit will probably cost you about $150, maybe slightly more if you don't have electric source nearby, and will need a solar powered fence. I have had electric fence for 3 seasons. The only time any critter went over was a small bear on two occasions (the electric was accidentally off). Just amazing to see how bears eat sweat corn. They eat ears of corn ears like they are breadsticks. The big training trick with an electric fence is to bait it, encourage all the critters to touch it when it is on. That means crimping scraps of aluminum to the hot (top) lead, then slathering on samples of peanut butter and jelly. When the critters touch it, they get 6K volts on the nose. The proper fence design for deer is three copper ground stakes (neg.) and a hot lead on the top. For climbers, like racoons, add a second ground lead (neg.) 4" under the top hot lead. In that way, the circuit will be completed either by animals standing on the ground and touching the top lead, or climbers. Just to add, store-bought electric fences will do no physical damage to any animal, just make them remember that they don't want to touch it again.