Wascally Wabbits

The weekend weather was perfection itself: warm, sunny, breezy and entirely designed to make us forget that winter ever happened. The Mister worked long and hard over the past two days to get the flowers into the ground and the vegetable garden up and running. I? supervised.

The Mister loves that vegetable garden. He's always had one, ever since he's had a house of his own and was able to putter around in it without having to ask for permission first.

When we were first married, we got the brilliant idea to plant only "novelty" vegetables, like purple peppers, blue potatoes, yellow tomatoes and white pumpkins. The only real problem was that most of those things are bred for looks, not flavor, and the salsa made with the purple peppers and yellow tomatoes was entirely without flavor, and looked just like barf. The shepherd's pie I made with the blue potatoes looked so revolting we couldn't bring ourselves to eat it. (Seriously, blue mashed potatoes are just a big, steaming pile of yuck.) We've stuck to more conventional efforts since.

Some things have been more successful than others. Even though the Mister tried to grow strawberries for 12 years, our biggest bumper crop was only about 7 berries. On the flip side, we've grown raspberries for a couple of years now, and they have been stellar. The rhubarb is always bountiful, even if the broccoli yeild has been niggling.

One of our biggest impediments to a plenteous harvest is the rabbits. Damn those rodents, they decimate that friggin garden, and it makes the Mister crazy. It's like he morphs into Elmer Fudd every year at this time. The Mister hates the rabbits with a fervor that, honestly, I find a little frightening in someone who is usually so temperate. I understand that the rabbits are a nuisance, but he reacts so violently to their presence in the garden that I am really, really glad that handguns are not legal in Canada. (My mother has the same reaction....it's like a reflex for both of them: see a rabbit, burst into flames.)

To that end, the Mister has engaged in a consumate, full-metal-jacket, unmitigated assault on the rabbits. He's not out to hurt them, he's out to thwart them utterly, in the hopes that they will move onto, literally, greener pastures, and leave the Loudshoes garden the hell alone.

He has constructed a very thorough and comprehensive fence around the garden, complete with a little gate. He did look into electric fencing, but decided it was too expensive. I'm not making that up, either.) The chicken wire and staples will be his WMD. It may deter the rabbits, but I'm sure the raccoons will laugh themselves silly, and then vault over the chicken wire (or just use the gate) and gorge themselves on our watermelon and spinach.

I do hope, for Himself and Thing 2's sake, that this works. Because if he starts up with a speech impediment and wearing a goofy hat, I'm out of here.