At Least Someone is Benefiting From My Labor....

So I am sure that everyone has been waiting with bated breath to hear how my garden is doing. As spring turns to summer the warmer weather has been great for my garden and I have started to see the fruits of my labor....sort of.

Before I went to Kansas we were just getting strawberries to turn in the garden. Perfect I thought, when the kids and I got back we could have a nice strawberry picking party. And indeed when I came back I saw a bounty of bright red strawberries in my garden. Upon closer inspection though I found a slight problem. I didn't get to them first. Apparently, we have a rabbit in our yard who has taken it upon himself to eat my strawberries. This fact was confirmed by our neighbor boy, who was out when I was lamenting over my garden and excitedly explained to me that he saw a bunny there just the other day. Instead of eating the entire strawberry he has been ever so kind to simply take one bite out of each berry leaving a good chunk of the berry behind so I know exactly how many strawberries I DON'T get. Thoughtful this bunny, don't you think?

I have looked on-line at humane/organic ways (ie ways not to poison us or the dogs) to get rid of them and here is what I found....

1) Spray cayenne pepper on the strawberries (doable but annoying since I have to spray it on after every time I water).

2) Drizzle dog/cat urine around the perimeter of the garden (yeah, I am thinking that following my dogs around with a cup trying to catch their pee is about as comic as it is infeasible).

3) Drizzle human urine around the perimeter (I thought this was the simplest idea but my husband showed little interest in whipping it out in the backyard and I don't trust my sons aim not to mention the fight that would ensue with Quinn wanting to do it too - sigh)

So for now it looks like I am going to have spicy strawberries though if I lose a lot more I may try some Merlot and a BB gun from my deck!!

But hey, I have lots of other plants, right? My tomatoes have started to come in, so all is not lost. Yesterday afternoon I spied several cherry tomatoes on the verge of being ready to pick and thought the kids would enjoy picking those almost as much as strawberries, since they love cherry tomatoes. But once again I was a day late and a dollar short. Though this time it wasn't the rascally rabbit that was the veggie thief but rather my faithful companion and best friend for the last decade - Guinness. I went out last night to bring him in and found him sitting in my garden happily picking the tomatoes off of my plants like he was at a salad bar.

So to recap -

Rabbit - 20 strawberries
Guinness - 5 cherry tomatoes
Me - countless hours of manual labor and two small slightly pathetic roma tomatoes.

Just call me Mr. MacGregor.