I stopped by the dollar store on my way to work yesterday morning to buy a ball of jute string. This store has a good greenhouse and other needful gardening stuff. My friend D. works there as manager of the greenhouse and is an avid gardener, herself. We got right down to the business of talking about our vegetable gardens.
She, too, has a load of volunteer tomatoes from last year's crop. Her philosophy on these volunteers was the same as mine: if they're in the paths between the rows, they get chopped down; if they're out of the way of the hoe/tiller/feet, they can stay. "I'm not tending to them, either," she said. "I'm not staking them, or feeding them. They're on their own. They either make it, or they don't." She said she has great clumps of them coming up under her green bean "teepees," and she is curious to see how well the beans and tomatoes will co-exist in the same space.
She also said that she has thoroughly had it with weeding and has decided to mow the grass in the middles rather than remove it. I'm kind of thinking that she might regret this decision next year, but we'll see. If it works, I might try it next year, for I'm not too keen on weeding, myself.
The dollar store had only small balls of jute left in stock. I bought three of them. Yesterday evening, just after dinner, The Husband and I went to the garden to string the jute between the two rows of fence posts I'd set in the ground on the rattlesnake bean rows. I'd strung baling wire between them, one strand 6" from the ground, and one strand across the tops of the posts. The plan was to tie the jute strings vertically, top and bottom, so that the beans can run up them. The Husband and I each took a ball of jute and set to work on our separate rows. It took about 30 seconds for us to realize that undertaking a job that requires repetitive bending so soon after dinner was not a good idea.
After we used up the jute (I hadn't bought enough to finish the job), I showed my husband some dime-sized animal tracks I'd seen while I was setting the fence posts. There was a double row of them. Each impression was only 1/2" away from the previous one, but the two rows were a full hand-breadth apart. They looked like mini-bulldozer tracks, and I had not been able to imagine what kind of animal had made them. "Turtle tracks," The Husband said, almost immediately. Ah, yes. Mystery solved. Nothing else would've taken such small steps.
We have entertained turtles in the garden in previous years. They will nip the bottoms of the ripe tomatoes that they can reach - and they can reach surprisingly high - and they will help themselves to cucumbers and anything else that's low to the ground. We told Nanny to add turtles to the list of things that The Nephew can shoot if he finds them in the garden. I wonder if turtle soup can be made from just any old kind of turtle. ;)
The Husband and I solved one other outdoor mystery this morning.
Near Easter, we bought four ducklings to put on the small pond beside our house. The idea was that they would help thin out the mosquito population and perhaps rid the pond of the billions of perch that have taken over. Our daughter-in-law raised the baby ducks in her chicken coop until we thought they had grown large enough to fend for themselves. We brought them home about a month ago. Two of the ducks disappeared - I mean COMPLETELY disappeared - before the week was out. No signs of a struggle, no feathers laying about. Just gone. A week later, a third duck disappeared. Same deal. No feathers, no beaks or feet on the bank. I did find a little bit of white fluff on the opposite side of the property, but couldn't be sure that it wasn't just fluff from the cottonwood trees.
Over the next month, the remaining duck survived to be a pretty good-sized duck. It had learned to come when we'd go down to the pond with a cup of ground corn, calling "Ducky-duck?" It would come waddling around the bank, whistling and quacking, ready to eat. We wondered where we could find a full-grown duck to bring home so he/she wouldn't be so lonesome.
Last week, Ducky-duck vanished.
This morning, The Husband called, "Come here. Hurry!" I hustled to the living room. He was standing at the window. "Look on the swing set."
There were two huge hawks perched on the swing set, and one hopping around in the yard, probably two parents and an offspring. A bluejay was swooping the one on the ground.
Last week, I'd heard screeching in the woods at that back corner of the yard, the very corner where I'd found the white fluff.
The Husband and I said, at the same time, "That's what went with the ducks."
I hope the bluejay is more successful at guarding her babies than we were.
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