Under Assault

I'm the victim of a two pronged attack here ...

I planted tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini this spring. The tomatoes are doing wonderfully well so far, and at this rate, we will have plenty of tomatoes to can and to share. This is a good thing. In fact, right now, I hear the buzzing of a honey bee doing it's job on my tomato plant. It's a nice fat bee, going to town. This is indeed good.

The zucchini seems to be setting itself up to be a massive grower as well ... I think this is a good thing, although I may resort to doing the leave the zuke on the doorstep and run from days past as a way to share my abundance. You can only freeze so much zucchini. Look in my freezer, at last years harvest, and it will speak for itself.

Now the peppers. I am normally a fan of wildlife, in all it's forms, big and small, cute and not so cute. But ... I am under assault over here. I have one rabbit that is persistently eating the leaves off my pepper plants. Today I watched him crawl in and go right up to the plant and start munching away. Last year, I had managed to grow in the neighborhood of 75 peppers! I made jam, I made soup, I froze them. It was wonderful. This year, I have sticks.

Last week I made some stinky concoction of garlic and onion, to spray on my plants as a rabbit deterrent. Ha! The little asshole apparently has become immune to the scent.

And then, when I was out there chasing the little bugger off ... I turned around and there was a chipmunk sitting on my back step. If I would not have been swearing at it, I'm sure I would have heard it laughing at me. It apparently lives under the toy box or somewhere on that side of the house.

My only hope now is that the hook worms don't come back this year and decimate my tomato plants.

I'm on my way out there now with chicken wire and a staple gun to close off the gaps in the fencing, and then will be closing off around the pepper plants. After I'm done with this, it will have been cheaper to go to the farmers market or the grocery store to buy the peppers. But there is still nothing better than going out in your yard and picking it from your plant. I love the smell of newly picked green peppers and tomatoes.

Stay tuned, this could be interesting.