Of the many many dreams I’ve had in the last 36 years the simplest and dearest has been to plant a salad garden. And this spring, finally, I did it. Nothing outrageous, just a row of lettuce, another of carrots & radishes, another of peas & bush beans, some tomato plants along the back fence, and one row devoted entirely to WallaWalla Sweet onions–with a completely separate watering system to prevent them from becoming WallaWalla Fuckin’ Burn Your Eyeballs onions. Oh yeah, and a tiny little experimental patch to see if I can get some sweet corn and canteloupes.
All was coming up nicely. No, not just nicely. For a few weeks my back yard looked like God was beginning to have mercy on this wicked world and had allowed a tiny corner of Eden to flourish. A garden free of pesticides & chemical nastiness, bugs controlled by other bugs…and none of the damned slugs that plagued us in Seattle.
Better yet, even the neighbors, who suspiciously monitor our every move (we’re the first renters in this house in the last 15 years that have not had any police visitation), were beginning to relax and anticipate the succulent & flavorful veggies, freely given, which would surely cement my and my family’s place in the 'hood as ‘solid foax.’
But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I come home from work one day, and you’ve sent me lovely little gems from the stratosphere, didn’cha! Did I say little? What kind of joke is it to send hail the size of my bleeding tomatoes? My lettuce looks like Bill Murray has been at it with a 3 wood, my peas were stripped from their runners and pounded into the muck! Everything else looks like a lawn mower got after it! And thank you thank you for completely smashing my onion watering system! Oh sure, $2 of PVC, but it’s the principle of the thing!
I don’t have the heart to start over. Guess I’ll just plant dope & dandelions like all the other renters. Fuck you, Hail God. Fuck you a lot.
I’ve learned that there is no point in my planting corn: the raccoons decided it was ‘pickable’ approximately 48 hours before I thouht it would reach that point. Did you know that raccoons can shimmy over a chicken wire fence with no sweat? Damn raccoons.
I’ve learned that there is no point in planting peppers or broccoli or lettuce: the deer ate the plants off at the ground level before they got a chance to start growing. Did you know deer can and will jump over a six foot fence to get at your garden? Damn deer.
I’ve learned that there is no point in planting radishes or carrots: something nibbled them off underground. And then the newly-vitaminized moles REALLY went to work making tunnels everywhere. Damn moles.
I’ve learned that there is no point in planting strawberries or raspberries: entire flocks of birds wiped out the entire crop. Damn birds.
I’ve learned that there is no point in planting pumpkins: some kid stomped them all into mush when they were about grapefruit sized. Damn kid.
Then this spring someone told me to plant tomatoes. Fool proof, he said. They’re in the same family as tobacco and there’s some chemical in the leafs that tastes bad and nothing will eat them. Hmmm. Really? Wow, really ripe tomatoes and no need for a fence. Okay, one more try.
Saturday I planted 18 tomato plants. It rained here Saturday and Sunday and Monday, so I didn’t have to go water them. Yesterday was dry, so I headed up to my garden… ALL of the leaves have been eaten off six of the plants, and two more are at least half stripped.
I can’t prove he was the culprit, but as I arrived I saw a little brown bunny hopping away from area.
Did my friend lie to me, or have I got some weird mutant bunny with no sense of taste living here?
We also have a coyote who strolls through our yard regularly, often in daylight. Now I’m rooting for the coyote to EAT MY MUTANT BUNNIES! EAT THEM! EAT THEM ALL! Ha-HA! That’ll teach the thieving bastards…
Heh, they can open Tupperware too, we hand-raised an orphaned baby raccoon when I was a teen. More mischevious and more curious a critter, I have never raised.
Doorknobs were absolutely no problem for him either, he’d simply stand on his hind legs, reach up and grab the doorknob and turn it, hopping backwards till the door opened a crack. chuckles
Who thought giving wild animals opposable thumbs was a good idea, anyways?
You know, this is an excellent idea…though what if it turns out he’s stolen MY credit card? :eek:
Inigo, nope, I’m clear on the other side of the country: Vermont. The coyote are a relatively recent arrival, the rest have been here forever. And I forgot to mention the black bears, who pull down bird feeds and empty them into their mouths like a frat boy with a can of beer. :mad:
Inigo Montoya?
When did this hailstorm happen? I live in Bellevue, and I didn’t notice any hail lately. I remember a whopper of a hailstorm back in April, but none since. However, I was very sick this weekend, and I literally slept all the way through Saturday. Was it then? (By the way, this is mere curiosity - I miss a lot of local weather events with my weird schedule and lack of windows in the cubicle farm that I spend most of my waking hours in).
And condolences on your garden and the dashing of your hopes to gain favor in the neighborhood. I’d love to do a garden like the gorgeous one I had in Mississippi, but we’re renting a place with nothing but steep inclines everywhere we could put a garden, so I spend the summer getting my produce from produce stands and generous coworkers blessed with horizontal yards.
Luckily I don’t get any of the warm-blooded garden pests, nor does the Hail God frequent this area.
However, I’m plagued by one European import I can do without: whiteflies. There’s no killing the little bastards. I don’t know if they’re doing my tomatoes any harm, but every time I brush the plants, a cloud of whiteflies floats up. I do know that they probably gave a virus to my Cavaillon melons a couple of years ago. It was heartbreaking - one week my melon plants were healthy and gorgeous and covered with little egg-sized melons; the next week most of the leaves had wilted and the melons were turning sickly yellow and dropping off. I’m unable to plant melons, cukes or any other cucurbits in my area due to whitefly. Grrrrr!
Appy-polly-loggies for not being clear. I live in Denver. Grew up in Renton (now Newcastle–Just up the hill and to the north from Boeing in fact). City of Newcastle? All trees & wildlife back then. Now razed and built up for a bunch of yuppies wanting to declare their little chunk of Suburbia, “Newcastle, City of Trees.” But that’s a rant for another day.
I just wanted to send another “fuck you” to Mr. Hail God after receiving the estimate this afternoon… Replacement of major body parts and repainting will take three weeks and comes to a total of $6,858.52. (Insurance takes care of most of that, but still.) Oh, and I found out I don’t have rental coverage! Yippee!
Racoons are clever little buggers. One time I was camping, sleeping peacefully, when my girlfriend (wife these days) woke me up because she heard something. So I stumbled out of the tent to find a racoon rummaging through the cooler. I yelled at it and chased it off, breaking the lantern glass in the process and probably waking up some neighbors. Then I saw my nice block of Tillamook cheddar sitting in the dirt, with a bunch of bite marks on it. I looked up and saw the theiving bastard at the edge of the campsite, waiting for me to go back to sleep so it can continue its raid on my cheese. I threw the cheese at its head, picked up the broken glass, and put the cooler in the car. Did I mention the cooler had a latch? One of the old metal kinds, with a lever that would engage a locking clamp on the lid.
Ah, I see. Not entirely your fault, though. Had I paid a leeettle more attention to the phrase “and none of the damned slugs that plagued us in Seattle.”, I could’ve sussed that out.
By the way, we had a rare occurrence in your old stomping grounds last night - a thunder and lightning storm that blew up a transformer and left about 6000 people without power. It was quite a show, and seemed to be centered right over Bellevue. It never hit Renton or Seattle, but the streets were covered in tree limbs this morning. Almost as good as a Mississippi thunderstorm!
Ah yes, the windstorms. I’d quite forgotten about those. Winds in excess of 75 mph with none of the national glitz & glory associated with hurricanes–just because the air is traveling more or less in a straight line instead of a circle. After a few of those you start wondering how any of the fir trees have ANY branches left on them.
Why on earth are you planting a garden? Sounds like you got a good eatin’ Atkins diet in your yard already. Except for the kid, of course. That’d just be wrong.
