R.I.P Rabbit(s)

Thursday evening I went to the garden to see what needed to be done. As I was walking the rows, I heard a buzzing sound. Then I saw it: a dead rabbit, lying between the green bean rows. Flies were buzzing all around it. I yelled, "YUCK. There's a dead rabbit out here."

I heard Pop-Pop chuckle. "I reck'n he got 'im."

While my husband got the shovel and disposed of the rabbit, Pop-Pop explained that my brother-in-law had taken a shot at a rabbit the night before, but thought he'd missed it. Apparently not, eh?

Since then, Pop-Pop has seen "a mangy 'coon" out there in broad daylight, and I have seen a couple more rabbits. In fact, just yesterday when I was out there running the tiller, I saw one run for the woods.

Tonight, the husband and I walked down to the garden to see if any beans were still standing. My brother-in-law was there, eating supper with the folks. After the table was cleared, we all migrated to the back porch. Brother-in-law reached behind the back door and grabbed the shotgun on the way out, just in case any varmints showed up. Several minutes passed. I said, "They're probably on the back side of the garden, living it up where we can't see them."

Brother-in-law dropped a shell into the shotgun and eased toward the south end of the garden. He'd only taken a few steps in that direction when he stopped, raised the gun, and fired. BLAM!

I kinda felt sorry for the poor little fluffy-tailed b*stard.

But not too sorry.

#)@% Rabbit

All has not been so wonderful in the garden this week. The black-eyed peas popped right out of the ground almost as soon as I planted them. While that was happening, the #)@% rabbit was on the other side of the garden, eating the butter peas that had sprouted a few days earlier. I'd also planted green beans in the "skips" in the green bean rows, and he ate those, too, and even nibbled at the older beans. I actually caught him doing it.

I yelled, "Heyyyy...GET OUT OF HERE!" He made a dash for the woods, but stopped about 10 feet from the tree-line, and turned his profile to me. I knew he was eyeing me out of the one beady eye that was turned toward me. I hollered at him again. He just sat there. All the hollering drew the dog to the garden. I pointed at the rabbit. "Bailey, there's a rabbit. GET HIM! Get the rabbit!" He just panted and wagged. Finally, the rabbit moved. Bailey saw it out of the corner of his eye. He shot in that direction like he'd been fired from a cannon. Alas, the rabbit was too quick.

Pop-Pop also heard the yelling and sauntered out to the garden to discover the cause of the commotion. I showed him the damage. While we were standing there, contemplating what to do, ANOTHER rabbit hopped out of the field to the south of the garden, and leisurely made his way across the corner of the yard. Pop-Pop studied the situation and said, "Maybe y'ought to dust 'em." I went to the shed for the pesticide powder (hate using the stuff, but I didn't have any better ideas), and sprinkled every bean plant in the garden.

Apparently, it worked. Apparently, rabbits are smarter than humans and won't eat stuff that has poison on it. No more beans are missing.

As the vegetable garden is on auto pilot for a few days, I decided to have a go at the yard today. There is (was) a Carolina Jessamine growing near my front porch. I have tried to train it up the porch post, but it preferred to go the other direction and climb all over the boxwoods, instead. It was a huge, tangled mess, and I decided it was time for it to go. I got out the loppers and snipped the thing off at the ground, then I grabbed the vines and started pulling. Boy, was it ever wrapped in the boxwoods. After some gentle (but unproductive) tugging, I gave the vine a good yank, and when it came loose, I sailed through the air on my back for about 6 feet, then fell flat, right into my heap of vine rubble and boxwood clippings. Lost both of my shoes and my hat. My husband happened to be standing on the porch, watching. To his credit, there was only a slight delay before he stopped laughing and came to help me up.

I'm feeling a little stiff in the get-along, already. :\

@)#! Dog

I went to the garden today with the intention of doing a little maintenance, like tying the tomato plants to their stakes, and training the pole beans up their poles. As I was tying the tomato plants, I found three big ripe tomatoes and a small ripe tomato, just right for picking (giving me visions of BLT sandwiches for dinner). I also found some blight on the tomato plants. Now, I don't like using chemicals, but I don't like losing all my tomato plants, either (been there, done that), so I mixed up a little fungicide in a pump sprayer and prepared to spray the plants. Before I sprayed, I picked the ripe tomatoes and laid them safely in the grass at the end of the garden.

My son's dog, a Cocker Spaniel named Bailey, had followed me to the garden. So had my mother-in-law. As I was spraying the tomatoes and she was weeding, I heard her yell, "Bailey, NO!" I looked up to find him running away, with one of my ripe tomatoes in his mouth.

I chased him down, took the tomato from him, and turned back to gather up the rest of the tomatoes. They were gone! I looked around. One was laying in the grass a few feet away. It had dog-tooth holes in it. So did the one in my hand. The third tomato, the ripest of the bunch, was nowhere to be found. I assume Bailey ate it.

Butthead.

We still had BLTs for dinner, dog-tooth-prints and all.

Mission Accomplished!

Finally got the damned black-eyed peas planted.

Friday afternoon, that persnickety tiller cranked and, mercifully, continued to run long enough to let me finish preparing the pea patch. Pop-Pop has a gizmo - a thing that looks like a miniature bicycle-on-a-stick - that plants seeds and covers them up as it goes. After about 8 hours of tilling and raking, the planting took about 2 minutes.

Just after dark that very evening, Mother Nature gently watered the garden. Those peas should be up in no time.

We had enough seeds to plant four half-rows. This means that I now have four empty half-rows. In that space, I may plant a few more tomatoes for a late crop. Might also plant some pumpkins for the grandkids, just for fun.

The butterpeas I planted earlier in the week are beginning to sprout. Mattie's lettuce is coming up, too.

Yesterday afternoon, when I was walking the perimeters of the garden (it's still too wet to walk down the rows), I saw a brown rabbit, as big as a Cocker Spaniel, sprint toward the woods.

I hope he doesn't like peas.

And we're off...or not.

Nanny called on Tuesday night and said that Pop-Pop had the tiller running. The best news was that Chris, one of the strapping young men in neighborhood, had been there when it happened, and he had tilled up the entire pea patch. Woohooo! I said I'd be down there the next evening to plant the peas.

I went to the garden about 4 p.m. yesterday. The newly-plowed spot was bristling with bermuda grass roots. I decided to rake out the grass before I planted the peas. Four hours later, I staggered to the shed to get the tiller, intending to turn up a little more grass from the depths.

That's when I discovered the tiller's real problem: it is deaf.

Before I yanked the cord the first time, I said to it, "Ok, I heard you're a go-getter. Show me what you've got." I pushed all the levers, shifted to neutral, and pulled. The tiller did not seem mildly interested in cranking. I yanked a few more times, adjusted the levers, gave it a pep talk, yanked again. And again and again and again. Finally, it coughed and sputtered to life. I herded it to the garden and had tilled up about three strips when it quit.

I checked the gas, and topped off the tank. I adjusted levers. I cranked and cranked and cranked. I cajoled it, cussed it, and shamed it. "This is your last chance, buddy." Yank. And it absolutely refused to start.

Hmph.

I left it where it sat.

Scares Me.

Tiller CPR

The tiller still isn't running. Pop-Pop says the gas tank and carbureator are full of rust, and the rust is gumming up the works. So he took the thing apart and cleaned it out. When I left him yesterday evening, he was trying to figure out how to get it back together.

On the gardening front, I transplanted some Great Northern Beans from the "skippy" ends of the rows to the gaps in the "less skippy" ends of the rows, ending up with two nicely-populated half-rows of beans. We'll see whether they can tolerate transplanting. I then planted the remaining two half-rows in butter peas. I also re-planted the "skips" in the pole beans. Yes, I should've done that three weeks ago, but I didn't have any seeds.

Nanny picked the first squash yesterday. It came from one of two plants that she bought, already sprouted and potted. The day I set the squash plants in the garden, I also planted some squash seeds. The plants that came from those seeds already have little squash on them. Thus, it appears that buying already-growing squash plants doesn't result in a plate of fried squash much faster than planting squash seeds does.

We'll be picking 4 ripe Juliette tomatoes this evening, assuming the squirrells didn't get them last night. Since they grew in Pop-Pop's dirt, we'll let him have the first taste. Assuming the tomatoes are still there, of course. Big assumption.

Last year, the squirrells vandalyzed the tomatoes something awful. When it first started happening, Pop-Pop offered to shoot any squirrells he caught in the act. I hated for him to do that. I mean, they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us, right? I didn't begrudge them a tomato or two.

It wouldn't have been so bad if they had eaten everything they picked. But I found not-quite-perfectly-ripe tomatoes lying between the rows. They had little claw-cuts on their sides, but they had not been bitten. It was as if the squirrells picked them, looked at them, said, "Nah, I can do better," and chunked them over their shoulders. Pop-Pop's mother said that she heard that squirrells eat tomatoes not so much because they are hungry as because they are thirsty, and that we should try setting out a pan of water for them. I secretly thought, "Puh-leeeeze," but I set out an ice cream bucket full of water between the garden and the woods. Didn't work. Finally, Pop-Pop said, "I'm g'on shoot 'im if I catch 'im."

Some few days later, Pop-Pop's friend, Charles, dropped by to visit. As they sat on the back porch talking, Charles (who is tongue-tied) pointed and said [Lord, forgive me for this], "Deah doze ye twuhwhl. He tame outta woods wight oveh deah." Pop-Pop went and got his gun. He propped it on the porch rail and waited. A minute later, the squirrell reappeared; he had a tomato in his mouth. Amazingly, he stopped at the edge of the garden, sat up on his hind legs, and began to eat the tomato. Pop-Pop drew a bead on him and fired. The tomato exploded. The squirrell ran for the cover. Pop-Pop shouted, "Damn!" Charles roared with laughter. "You tuddna done 'at if you'd twied!" He would periodically break into giggling fits for the rest of that visit, and for the rest of the summer would ask, "You chot any twuhwhls waitwy?"

Note to Self:

Planted carrots, lettuce, and zinnas last week.

Actually, my 3-year-old granddaughter, Mattie, planted carrots, lettuce, and zinnas last week. All in the same spot. Right between two of my tomato plants.

I knew I shouldn't have put her in charge of those seed packages while I prepared the rows.

The Pea Patch

A month ago, Pop-Pop said, "Where we go'n put the peas?"

I looked across the newly-planted garden. Uh-oh. I'd planted all the rows, already, leaving no room for any black-eyed peas.

"Don't matter," he finally said. "We'll break up a pea patch."

I sensed trouble on the horizon.

You see, although Pop-Pop has two - count 'em, TWO - tractors, he has no breaking plow. For the past few years, he has conned a friend or neighbor into breaking up our garden. Typically, this means that we don't get our garden plot broken up until these friends or neighbors decide it's time to break up their gardens. At this time of the year, the breaking plows have long since been put away. And my little 4-tine tiller simply won't do to break new ground for a whole pea patch.

But this past Friday evening, when I went to the garden to plan the weekend's work, there sat the little Ford tractor, with a borrowed 2-row breaking plow attached, ready for business. Pop-Pop said to send Joel (my husband) or Clay (our son) to break up the pea patch the next day. Neither of them looked happy about the job (I don't know that either of them has ever driven a tractor with a plow attached), but Joel reluctantly said he'd do it. Saturday evening, he finally said, "I'm going to break up the pea patch." I finished what I was doing, put on my gardening apron, and started across the road on my bike (the driveway is l-o-n-g) to see how "The Breaking o' the Patch" was coming along.

I could hear tractor parts whining and grinding long before I spotted it in the shade at the back side of the garden. Wait a minute...back side of the garden? The peas were to go in front.

I pedaled faster.

But there was Pop-Pop in the driver's seat, twisted around to watch the plow behind him. Joel was standing nearby, hands on his hips. What in the world...? Were they practicing? I stopped at the corner of the garden, got off my bike, and stood there, listening. It seemed something was amiss; the plow wouldn't lower properly. Oh, dear.... But, yes, they knew the pea patch was to go in front of the garden.

Wisely, I refrained from suggesting that they "practice" in the vicinity of the actual pea patch. Instead, I quietly took up a hoe and did some weeding.

Within a few minutes, there's movement in the shadows. Here comes the tractor, with Joel in the driver's seat, looking amazingly confident. He lines 'er up with the intended ground. The plows goes down, the tractor lurches forward, the first rows break apart. Pop-Pop rolls along beside the tractor on his electric scooter, monitoring the work. Oh, we're cookin' now!

But at the end of the first row, the progress stops. The plow won't come up, not all the way. It raises enough to bring the tips of the blades to the top of the soil. Joel swivels around to look for Pop-Pop, who motions with his hand and yells, "Go 'head." Joel puts the tractor in gear and drives around the garden to line up for the second pass, with the plow blades scoring two shallow grooves in the grass.

I said nothing.

At the end of pass #2, when the plow wouldn't come up at all, there was some off-tractor conferencing. After a minute or two, Joel unhitched the tractor and drove it to the shed, abandoning the plow where it sat, half-buried at the end of the row. I walked over to where Pop-Pop sat on his scooter. It seemed the tractor would need some tinkering before any more plowing should occur. Meanwhile, the concensus was that Uncle B. (next door) should come on HIS tractor to get the plow out of the ground and finish the breaking. I looked across the pasture. Uncle B. was at that moment on his tractor, mowing the field behind his house.

I could see that no more pea-patch-breaking would occur that day, nor probably the next day, as the next day was Sunday, and you generally don't catch Uncle B. on a tractor on Sunday.

I made a suggestion: there was a tiller orphaned in the shed of a family member. I had been offered use of the tiller. It hadn't been used in a few years, and probably would need some T.L.C., but surely all the mechanical geniuses in the family could get it running. Joel and I climbed into Pop-Pop's old truck, and fetched the tiller, which turned out to be a honking big, rear-tine, power-driven piece of machinery.

The men-folk gathered around it in the shop yesterday morning. Since Clay is the youngest, and, presumably, the most able-bodied, the honor of yanking the starter cord fell to him. After a few non-productive pulls, they tore into it, and began to do things to it, like propping flaps open with screwdrivers, and pouring gas into places that didn't say "GAS". Clay grabbed the pull cord again. I stood back. It fired up and ran for about 5 seconds, then died. More parts came off. They moved the tiller to the yard, under a shade tree. A neighbor came up, and said they ought to pour gas in a hole. They'd already tried that.

If you're looking for me today, I'll be out hunting tiller parts.

Check-Up (for real this time)

When I started the previous post (Check-Up), I intended to talk about how this year's garden was coming along.

You see how easily I can be distracted.

This time it's for real.

Tomatoes: Coming right along. We planted several varieties - 55 plants, total. Many of the plants have small green tomatoes on them. The plants that don't have any fruit are a bit puny. I'm worried that we drove stakes through their root systems as we were staking them. Maybe they will recover.

Squash: Blooming, some with small squash.

Potatoes: This is the first year I've grown potatoes. The plants look nice. Who knows what's underground? Pop-Pop says I should heap dirt around the stem of the plants. I did that yesterday, until I ran out of daylight (and loose dirt).

Green beans: Just beginning to run up their bamboo-cane teepees.

Great northern beans: I planted dried beans from the grocery store, as the seed stores around here typically do not stock "white beans." The rows are skippy - I should have replanted the skips.

Lima beans: The first planting did not sprout, but the second one did.

Cucumbers: I hope that they find the fence I made for them when they begin to run. Last year, I let them run on the ground, and and we had cucumbers hanging from the tomatoes and the okra.

Eggplants: Leaves look like lace, thanks to some crunchy bugs (no, I didn't eat any; I thumped them off the plants, and stepped on them). They look like orange-black-striped jelly beans. What ARE these bugs, anyway?

Sunflowers: I swear they grow a foot a day!

Herbs: Dill is about to bloom. So is the basil. (I'm pinching the basil back, trying to keep it from blooming, as I hear it gets bitter after it blooms.) The parsley is bushy and green. Garlic - I swear I planted some. Just gotta find it.

Zinnas: Volunteers from last year's crop. They're coming up in the middles of the rows and in the grass along the edges of the garden. I transplanted some of them from the middles to the rows (between the tomatoes) yesterday, before my husband could grind them up with the tiller, but did not get around to watering them after the move. I hope they don't croak in the hot sun today before I can water them this evening.

Onions: Nice blades. I'll need to pull up a few soon, to give the rest room to grow. My friend, Denise, gave me some "multiplying onions." It was almost a week before I planted them, and I was sure that all of them were viable. I stuck them at the end of an empty row that I was saving for okra, so as not to confuse them with the regular onions. My husband tilled that row yesterday afternoon. I forgot to tell him about the onions. He probably plowed them under. Wonder if I can find them today?

Okra: Seeds soaking in a bowl right now. Planting them this afternoon.

Black-eyed peas: Haven't planted any yet. Pop-Pop meant for me to plant some, but I used up all the garden space for other things. Right now, we have tarps laying on the ground in an annexed area at the edge of the garden, trying to kill some of the grass before we till up the spot and plant the peas.

We did a little maintenance work yesterday, tying the tomatoes to their stakes, running the tiller down the middles of the rows, and running the hoe where the tiller couldn't go. More weeding (and dirt-heaping on the potatoes) to do this afternoon.