Please Tell Me Why

Hardly a growing season day passes without Jo and I cussing or discussing cottontail rabbits. We are either complaining about the veggies they've eaten or plotting strategies to keep them from eating our produce.

So why are we letting this nest of bunnies Jo found while weeding continue living in our strawberry bed? Evidently, rationality (and, perhaps, even sanity) isn't one of our strong points.

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Please Tell Me Why

Monday, 8/27/07

RABBITS: We've almost gotten ourselves out of the rabbit raising game. We didn't plan it that way; we just weren't paying close enough attention and let all our rabbits get old without saving any replacements. Several months back we got a young buck from some friends thinking that he would solve all our problems. However, it takes two to tango -- so they say -- and we discovered that our doe population (3) was as geriatricly impair as was/were our bucks. (One buck died; the other was shooting blanks.)

We bred our new buck to our three does. Two does did not conceive and the other had a litter of one -- and it died.

We tried again. One doe still did not conceive. Another was clearly pregnant, went several days passed due and died. The third had a litter of two.

We finally got around to sexing our two new rabbits today and found we have a male and a female. Two females would have been better, but with our luck, we figured we had two bucks. I reckon we can start rebuilding our rabbit herd now. I also reckon that we've got some rabbits that need to be butchered for the stew pot.

HORNWORMS: We may be at the end of our tomato (tobacco) hornworm problem. I certainly hope so! Today we only found one caterpillar. Yesterday and the day before we only found two per day. That's a lot better than the dozen or so we found for several days in a row.

HOT AGAIN: The temperature climbed up to almost a hundred degrees today. It was still 80º at midnight. Tuesday is also supposed to be really hot. However, a new cool front, lower temperatures and a chance of rain are forecast for Wednesday.

Monday, 8/27/07

Saturday, 7/7/07

Sunflower out in front of Jo's studio.




Potatoes: Dug our Yukon Gold potatoes today, a total of 63 pounds. We've harvested more potatoes, but it's been a few years. While digging the potatoes, I uncovered a rabbit's nest. No wonder we have so many rabbits in the garden. They're raising their young in there. Or, I should say, they were raising their young. Rusty and Bucket may be lazy house dogs, but when those rabbits broke from the nest, those dogs' instincts kicked in. There are no more bunnies.







Tomatoes: Our first tomato harvest of the 2007 gardening season.







Internet: This morning the phone was working, but our ISP was down. It took a while, but we finally got our telephone and our ISP working at the same time.

Saturday, 7/7/07

Monday, 7/2/07

Green Bean: I'm really glad that Jo and I were able to get the majority of the green beans before they were discovered by the rabbits. It seems as if a veggie can do okay in the garden for a while, but once the rabbits begin eating it, the damage soon becomes extensive.

Sweet Potatoes: Our sweet potatoes have been covered with welded wire tunnels ever since they were transplanted into the garden. Deer love sweet potato vines and we wanted to make certain they were protect should the deer happen to get into the garden. We also hoped the welded wire would discourage rabbits, even though they can squeeze through its mesh. Evidently, our hopes did not come true. We noticed nibbling here and there on the sweet potato vines. So...... This afternoon we covered the welded wire with chicken wire, just like we had to do for the emerging corn plants. The chicken wire will need to stay in place until we dig the sweet potatoes next fall right before the first frost. Fortunately, the sweet potato bed is heavily mulched. We won't be needing to get into it to do any weeding. Getting that chicken wire off after the vines have woven in and out of it ought to be a really fun experience, though. Oh, well. We know from past experience that the sweet potatoes won't do well at producing potatoes underground unless they've got plenty of health, green vines on top of the ground.

Tomatoes: While I cut sections of chicken wire to length for the sweet potatoes, Jo tied up some of the tomato plants that were growing into the path. The tomatoes are in cages, but many have outgrown their confinement. The aisle between the two rows of tomatoes was become a tomato jungle. We had to do something or else I wouldn't be able to keep it mowed and weeded.

No rain: It didn't actually rain today, but you could have wrung moisture out of the air, I think. When we went on our afternoon walk around four o'clock, the temperature was 81º and the relative humidity was 79%.

Monday, 7/2/07