Die, bunny! Die!

I foolishly thought we could live in peace and harmony. The rabbits contentedly munching on bahia grass, and my garden safely nestled behind the confines of the electric fence. I was wrong.

This morning as I began my ritual of checking on the garden and hand pollinating my squash I was shocked to discover a rabbit inside my fence and eating the ONLY Cherokee Purple Tomato I have!!! It had plucked the just starting to turn pink fruit off the vine and was chowing down.

My trigger happy husband has been asking me if he could shoot the rabbits that frequent our yard, and I naively kept telling him to leave them alone. Today, however, I'm putting a bounty out on my four-legged foes, and all bunnies who dare hop onto our property will meet a solemn fate compliments of Remington.

I also intend on upgrading our FiShock to a horse and cattle unit. Hopefully doing so will prevent further ground outs from twigs touching the fence and stem any further losses.

Count 'em. Four, yes, four!

This evening as I was watching the US Open i.e. attempting to nap to the US Open, my husband asked me if the electric fence was on. I forget to plug the thing in half the time, so my immediate thought was probably not. And I was right, so I went outside to plug in the fence to discover what I initially thought were three little hoppers in the backyard. They didn't even budge as I walked out the door to plug in the fence. They all just continued to contently munched away on our overgrown bahia grass - not such a bad thing.

Since they were not intimidated by my appearance I decided to come back in the house and grab my camera. They weren't disturbed by my second appearance with camera in tow, so I was able to fire off some shots of them grazing. As I took a few shots I realized that there weren't just 3 rabbits - there were four!

I stood outside and watched them for at least 10 minutes. Two of them got dangerously close to the electric fence as they peered enviously into the garden. I just knew I was gonna get some really cheap entertainment when one of them touched their nose to the fence, but alas, no luck tonight.

The two smaller rabbits were a bit more shy and stayed closer to the safety of the wooded area.

These two felt perfectly comfortable hopping around in the open area of the yard, and even playing with each other. I was only about 15 to 20 feet from them as I snapped these shots.

I bet he's thinking the garden looks pretty tasty, but he'll have to settle for bahia.

First harvest

Today I picked the first veggies from my garden. I think I left the crookneck on the vine a little too long. See how bumpy it is.... Guess I'll find out when I try to eat it. It along with its zuke cousins will be on the menu tomorrow. yum

This year's first harvest

Pics from the past week or so

Here are some pictures I've taken since I got back. Most with my phone because it's easier to carry to the garden than my camera, and easier to upload too because I don't have to resize the pictures. The downside is the quality is not nearly as good, and the focus is not sharp. But these are garden pictures not pictures for the art gallery, so I guess they'll do.

I'm having to hand pollinate all of my squash and zuchinni, which is kind of a pain, and I've lost several female squash blossoms because I overlooked them during my morning garden inspection, or they bloomed after I left for work.

Last week pics:

Baby eggplant

This week's pics

Eggplant blossoms

Almost ready!

Getting bigger

Cherokee Purple - it's kinda split. Not sure if it is gonna make it to ripening with all those splits

No, I have not given up again

I just had to go on vacation. Well, I didn't have to. I wanted to.

Luckily I have a wonderful sister-in-law who is an expert at garden sitting. It made leaving so much easier knowing my garden was in good hands. She doesn't have any gardening experience, but having an SFG makes gardening easy - water every other day or when the soil feels dry and make sure the electric fence is plugged in. Not much to it, and she followed the instructions to the T.

When I arrived back from vacation I was thrilled to find my garden in wonderful shape (the rain we got helped too!) with tons of little green tomatoes dotting the vines, sprawling squash and zuke plants, and flourishing seedlings. It was a sight for sore eyes.

Here are some pics I took when I got back from vaca:

Sweet Baby Girl cherry tomatoes

Early Girl tomato

Female zuke flower - finally!

Another female zuke flower

Fantastic tomato