At this time of year, gardening is on people’s minds. Think at this time of year people are starved to see green growing things, not food mind you, there is the grocery store for that. Racks have been appearing in all sorts of stores for some time now, filled with small packets of flowers and vegetable seeds. When it comes to my garden, my mind takes flights of fancy. What shall we plant this year, shrubs, trees, bulbs, seeds? I find myself walking around the yard trying to visualize how different plants would look in a certain spot? Thinking just how beautiful it will all be one day when everything is in and starts to grow. One of us thinks the yard is already too full, while one believes there is always room for more of everything. We do realize there is a need for more sunlight on our small plot of good earth! A small fortune was spent last year there were watermelons, tomatoes, yellow crooked neck squash, green beans, chard (which had been a total failure), and okra. It was a bit like Jack’s beanstalks. It grew so tall Red had to stretch up as high as he could reach, and then bend it over carefully so as not to break the stalk to cut the pods off you might call it an over producer. There were bell peppers, and still more. My pride and joy had been several rows of sunflowers, planted in a huge variety of different seeds. Then did a bit of an artistic spin on planting them. Planted them all across the backyard and then curved them around and up toward the house. Planted so many different varieties of sunflower seeds, they came up at staggered intervals. They were hardy plants, and some had grown tall quickly. Then one day I was shocked to see that the ones just coming up, had been eaten off at the ground? Later some larger hardier ones had been ridden over and chewed off, leaving about 10 inches of the stalks still standing. The rest already with big leaves was withering in the sun. Talk about sick, I felt like a farmer that lost his crop. We waged a losing battle for every day more plants were destroyed. Staring out the kitchen window to the back one day I saw one of the culprits. Could hardly believe what I was seeing it was next to the biggest groundhog I’d ever seen. He was eating like he was at one of those all-you-can-eat-buffets! Off around the house I went with a broom running and hollering as I went, he took off down the hill towards a drainage ditch and disappeared. Waddling his chubby little self as fast as his short legs could go. It is truly a painful thing to lose your garden to a slow death, a few plants at a time.
