One of the tools in my arsenal, to counter MOTHER NATURE's nasty habits is the good old colour seed catalogue...I bring it out every year about this time and peruse its pages slowly, imagining all the lovely flowers and veggies growing in my postage stamp sized garden... sighhhhhh the flowers look so beautiful and lush... this years pictures seem particularly crisp and lovely
So I sit here as the last bits of light dwindle from our winter sky, deciding which seeds to place in my order..for a garden that is five months away from being planted...hahaha boy we humans optimistic. Robert and I have decided to erect the old elk fencing that fish and game guys left here a few years ago. Hopefully it will cover all the bases, keeping out the dogs, who dug up some of my potato hills to make just the right sized nest hole in the cool damp earth on a hot summers day, the white tail deer who were coming in the quiet of the night to nibble on my beet tops, corn stalks and peas, the barn cats from using the summer fallow side of the garden as a public toilet and the fox/coyote that dug up all the last of the carrots that I had so lovingly thinned and nurtured all summer and either broke them or chewed them and ate them.... why couldn't they have eaten some of the gazillion tomato plants that we had in the garden...and spent the last three months of 2010 trying to fob off on neighbours...Oh noooooo we can't have that...that might have actually been helpful...Little so and so's... so I will fix them...I will erect an eight foot tall tightly woven net fence all around the garden. it will of course be a pain in the ass for me when I need to go over and work in the garden...and hopefully it won't keep the bees from pollinating...although it isn't that finely woven...the openings are about 3"x3", so upon reflection it might not be able to deter the cats or the squirrels but certainly anything bigger than that...I am excited actually, because I lose a lot of produce to wildlife....I won't have to plant so much in 2012 if it works the way I hope it will. hahaha...
My garden spot is my mother in laws old yard...it is a nice spot, protected from the howling winds we get here and hot as hades...in the summer...but because it is in the other yard...animals roam freely through it... even the dogs...although they know better than to set foot on tilled earth while I am around..... when the Cat's away the mice will play....and they are no exception ...the foot prints left behind are evidence enough...but what can you do.... at least these dogs don't go into the garden and eat the veggies...like the house dog I had years ago...(in another life time) "Toby" used to go into the garden and pull the peas off the vine and eat them...I know I should have never fed him some because he was that smart that he watched me pick them, split the pod and feed him the peas...so after awhile he just did it himself...he also used to pick raspberries...It started with me picking the berries and he came with me...would lay at my feet and soon began eating any that fell on the ground...pretty soon he would be on the other side of the row....yanking on the berries...even from the house you could look out into the garden (this was on a different farm) and see the pea wire shaking like crazy... I even had a cat who would come to the garden and eat the cucumbers...so you would be picking them and find a few that had been half eaten...bloody cat...she was weird...she loved sauerkraut...too...
1 comment:
:o) it will warm up! xo
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