How Thoughtful Of Me To Plant All This Food

My last hope for a tomato harvest is extinguished with the latest raid by the local gang of deer, who have agreed not to rough me up in exchange for "protection veggies." They rule this neighborhood with an iron hoof. Just to show they mean it, they've knocked down a sunflower and left tooth marks all over my very small watermelon.

Most of my garden this year went to feeding the deer. Beet greens, carrot tops, kohlrabi leaves, the tips of my bean plants and pepper plants, and of course every part of the tomato plants...every other week or so the deer come in and help themselves. Oscar and I put up a fairly basic scare crow a few weeks ago and that seemed to keep the deer away. I watched my tomato plants FINALLY go un-nibbled long enough to flower and grow heavy with fruit. Maybe a dozen tomatos were showing a faint shade of red...then two days ago the deer overcame their fear of our stick frame with a plastic pail for a head and laughed at it as they munched on everything.


Next year I'll have to make a tall fence around the garden. The 4 foot chain link fence around our yard is only meant to keep honest deer out. Not the theivin' kind. It doesn't even tickle their tummies as they step over it.

In other news, it's getting close to wood season again. We got to use the fireplace last Tuesday as the night temp dropped down to the 40s. We'll probably light another fire tonight. Now that the weather is cooling off I'm in gathering mode again. It's been too hot to cut these past couple months. A neighbor down the street cut down their birch tree. I asked him if he had plans for it and he said he was gonna take it out back and burn it all...but I'd save him the trouble if I took it.

So I took it. Birch smells nice when it burns.

We have enough wood to last us the winter. Now I'm trying to get get ahead for NEXT winter. Ideally I'll have a rotating stock of wood...one dries, the other BURNS! MUaaaaa ha ha ha ha haaaa...