Critters

Sometimes I feel as though I am gardening with an audience. The audience being from little to big, butterflies, voles, chipmunks, mice, red squirrels, gray squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks and deer. And why would they be watching you ask? Well, to see what will next on their menu of course. Let’s start with the butterflies.

We aren’t talking about the beautiful swallowtail, Baltimore or New Hampshire’s state animal the Karner Blue. Nope, it’s the simple cabbage butterfly that just can’t resist the allure of a brassica smell. So this year I invested in an insect netting to protect our broccoli, kale and Brussels sprouts. Unfortunately I failed to properly fasten the netting down along the lower edges, thinking that the butterflies weren’t sharp enough to find their way in. Well, I was wrong. In they went and then the fun began. After mating (I didn’t get to see them in the act, but I assume they found each other as the females were able to lay their eggs on the plants. Then after hatching, the little caterpillars began to ravage the plants I had such high hopes for. Better luck next time.

This is a peach. The peach is sitting on the lawn under the peach tree, half eaten. What has gone on here? Well, this is just one of many peaches that have made their way down the tree and off towards the woods in the mouth of, take your pick; chipmunk, red squirrel or gray squirrel. This one was lost in the rush I guess. Well, there was enough to share I guess. On to the rabbits.

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I spent a good deal of energy building a fence around the greenhouse garden to keep out the dreaded woodchucks who can decimate a veg patch in a short afternoon. I didn’t anticipate that the size of the holes in the fencing would not deter the smaller bunnies we have hopping around our yard. I have to admit that when they are sitting on the lawn munching on clover they are quite cute. When they slip through the fence as though it wasn’t even there to munch on the carrot tops, well not so cute. The raised beds are a bit too tall for the little bunnies to get up on to so they can’t do too much damage. The larger rabbits (yes we have both; that ‘s where the little ones came from) don’t seem to want to try to squeeze through the fence so all in all, this isn’t too bad of a problem. And then there are the deer.

Yes, there are healthy looking hostas in the foreground of this picture. But upon closer examination you might notice that all that is left of several other hostas are their naked stems. Our resident deer seem to think that our shade garden is their personal salad bowl. Well, they could have done more damage (and they have in the past), so I guess this isn’t the worst that could have happened. The raccoons didn’t tear down own corn. There are no black bears to sip from our hummingbird feeder. The local barred owl didn’t abscond with our 13 pound dog Dinah and the foxes that migrate through our woods haven’t woken us up with his bood curdling cries in the middle of the night. It’s a lot of fun living with wildlife!