Just When You Thought Things Were Going OK…

So I came home from work today, and as my normal routine, I let The Ladies out, collected my eggs and cleaned out the coop.  Then I went to the garden to see what needed watering...   My heart sank when I saw this:

 

All the leaves you see at the top of the bed are just that – leaves.  As in not connected to anything rooted in the dirt.

If you remember, the bed was supposed to look like this:

 

 

A deer had hopped my fence and ate most of my beets   

They left me a couple 

You can’t see it in the picture, but there are huge clod-hopping deer tracks going all through the bed. It (they?) even ate a pepper plant and stomped over one of the new seedlings    I was soooooo looking forward to making more Harvard beets this year, too…

Here are where most of the tracks are

 

My corn and cucumber bed was visited too, but fortunately aside from losing a few corn plants, it was relatively unscathed…

 

And THEN, to top it off  - as I was doing some fixing and watering, you’ll never guess what I saw inside my garden fence.  Go ahead guess.

Yep.   You got it.

A baby bunny.

Yeah. 

So I picked it up and put it outside the fence. 

That was the first time I’ve ever heard a rabbit scream.  I wasn’t doing anything to it – I was just holding it.  I guess it was just freaked out and screamed.  It was weird.

So anyway, as I was continuing my fixing and watering, guess what else I saw inside my garden fence.  Yeah.  Another baby bunny.

So I picked it up to put outside the fence - it screamed too.  It’s amazing how loud such a little thing can be 

So I went about my business and of course a third baby bunny shows up.  So I picked it up.  (This one didn’t scream).  I had this bunny in one hand and went to get my camera to get a picture of it and of course it got a away.  I’m sure it hid in my holding bed that is way over-crammed with perennials, and I couldn’t find it again.

Flash forward to later in evening when I got home from a meeting.  I went to check on the garden and guess what I saw inside my garden fence.  Yeah – Mama Bunny (I’m assuming).  So I chased her and saw her go through the hole she chewed through the fence.  Just like Sapphire01 warned me about. 

OK, so they’ve all probably all been inside my garden fence for a while now – but they really haven’t caused any damage.  So far. (Unless they’ve been the ones eating my strawberries instead of the birds)  I definitely give them points for that    But there’s no point in taking any chances, so I put wire fencing along the bottom of plastic fencing – at least most of it (I ran out of the extra stuff I had lying around) .

There’s not much I can do about the deer unless I go to a higher fence (not going to happen – at least not too much higher) or an electric fence.   I really didn’t want to mess with an electric fence, but I may not have a choice.  I guess I’ll have to see what happens…

Another Crazy Story

OK – this is going to be one of those “Are  you serious????” weeks – I can tell already!

Are they kidding me with this story????

…Wildlife biologists say an initiative to preserve New England Cottontail rabbits will branch out into New York, Rhode Island, and Maine.

 

 

There are so many of these guys around, it’s not even funny!  I had to buy fencing to keep them out of my garden.  I know my Mom can’t even have a vegetable garden or grow certain plants because the rabbits eat them.  I also have a couple other friends that totally gave up on any kind of garden (veggie and flower) because of all the Evil-Garden-Eating-Rabbits they have.  Egads!

Maybe if they were just trying to preserve the Non-Evil, Non-Garden-Eating variety of cottontail rabbits, I wouldn’t mind, but as it is, I think the rabbits are doing just fine on their own

Growing – or Not

I really liked my tulips…

 …and if you look closely – it looks like someone else was liking them too.

 

 REALLY liking them 

 

 

…but none of my daffodils were touched.  I guess I’ll just stick with daffodils from now on    

 

The culprit?  Either

      or    

But on the brighter side of things…

Last Sunday I planted seeds to get my garden started.  I jumped off the idea from Dave at The Door Garden.  While my setup isn’t even close to being as fancy as Dave’s, it seems to be working.  Yesterday a lot of the seeds started coming up… here’s what they are looking like today:

Yay!  I’m very encouraged and hope to have a really high germination rate…  I am soooo looking forward to a garden full of tasty goodness 

It's a Small World After All...

I guess my chickens love everybody and everybody loves my chickens... Believe it or not, one of the stupid Garden-Eating-Rabbits is just off camera. I feel like I'm living in Disney World.

Oh! And I got two more eggs today :)

Labor Day Weekend

At my old job I hated holidays. Holidays meant working and working longer hours. I am now among the masses that actually gets holidays off. I like holidays now :)

Today I had a nice relaxing afternoon at a picnic. I met some new people and learned more about people I already knew. I've been under a lot of personal stress lately and today did my soul a lot of good. I also learned that a turkey can be cooked in a garbage can! I don't eat meat, but it did smell good and everyone said it was juicy and delicious. I want to see if I can talk my Mom or sister (depending on where Thanksgiving is this year) into trying the same thing.

Tomorrow I have another picnic planned, which I am also looking forward to going to.

This week I managed to get a couple decent pictures of the chickens playing with the Stupid Garden Eating Rabbits (or are the rabbits playing with the chickens?)




OK - is this the weirdest thing or what?

I guess I should be happy that they all get along :)

Wild Things

I used to have a bat problem. I thought I had it taken care of, but they came back. They were back in my eaves :(

A face only a mother could love

This week I put bird netting around the eaves of my house. This allows the bats to fly out at night, but because they aren't as good flyers as birds, they can't navigate the netting to get back in. It seems to have worked, as I haven't seen any bats coming out of the eaves since the netting went up.

A bat heading out for the night - notice the full moon :)

This weekend, the project for me and my posse is to seal up the eaves so I can take down the netting and the bats (or starlings!) won't be able to get back in.

---

The Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbits in my yard are getting bolder and bolder. As much as I try to scare them so they will stay away, they just don't scare.



This is what my corn looks like, thanks to them:



Every morning and every day when I get home from work, at least two of the three Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbits are hanging out by the chicken coop. For some reason, they seem to like the chickens.



Yesterday I had let The Ladies out for a little while and one of the Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbits hopped on over to the chickens. It was funny, because the chickens went over to see the Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbit - they've only seen the Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbits through their fence. It must have been too overwhelming for him, because when Stupid-Garden-Eating rabbit saw six chickens coming towards him, he took off like a shot. Maybe when The Ladies start free-ranging, they will protect my garden too :)

The exciting thing today tho', was when I got home from work and went to check on The Ladies, there was a Mama Turkey and little baby turkeys by the coop! I have never seen wild baby turkeys before - it was so cool. Mama Turkey took off pretty quickly when she saw me, but I think she must have had five or six babies with her. I would think that it was too late in the season for any kind of wild babies, but I guess not.

I see wild turkeys all the time in the farmers fields around here, but I rarely ever see any in my yard. Much less a mama with chicks. I really hope they come back!

The Ladies love to go out exploring!

Piggy Bunny Rabbits

Isn't it amazing how nice your lawn looks right after it's cut - no matter how many weeds there are?

The barn swallows were swooping away as I was mowing the lawn today. I haven't seen those guys in a long time. They are so much fun to watch as they go after the bugs. They make me smile :)

I realized for the first time today that the half-tree that came down last week also took down a big chunk of my pear tree that was next to it :( I hope I will at least get some pears this year. I won't be able to really tell until I get around to cleaning up the dead-fall first. Maybe I'll have time this weekend.


If you look at the tree standing on the left, you can see where the tree split...

It must be because of the holiday that there are so many police cars around the last week or so. I'm seeing them *everywhere*.

I wish it would stop raining. My basement is never going to dry out at this rate.

Does anyone out there want a couple of rabbits? I have two in my yard that won't leave my garden alone. I've never had such a problem before. The robins and I used to share the strawberries - there was plenty for all of us. Not this year. Piggy Bunny Rabbits have spent all their time the past couple of weeks eating them all. The Piggy Bunny Rabbits have also eaten my peas, beets and lettuce. I've always had rabbits in the yard, but they never bothered my garden before - I don't know what's changed. I planted my corn, green beans and cucumbers late, so they haven't come up yet - but I need a plan to save them now. I'm thinking of trying a small electric fence around the garden. I have a solar panel kit that I picked up a couple of years ago for another project that never came to fruition - so I'm thinking of trying to use that to set up something. I have to do something soon - otherwise there won't be a point of me having a garden. Except for my peppers and tomatoes. They haven't touched those. Yet. And why don't the eat the weeds?