Scoundrels

Since the weather has been pretty warm I decided to just plant the beans today. Those scoundrels at Seed Savers gave me more seeds than they said on their packet, and I mixed the beans with the bacteria that help them fix nitrogen. Well there I was, planting away, when I had gotten about 30 into the ground. Well I looked in my cup with the unplanted fellows and there still seemed to be a mighty lot of them. I counted. 40. What on earth. They gave me twenty extra seeds? The nerve! Those free-seed-giving scoundrels! I couldn't believe it. Normally this would be no big deal, but my garden doesn't have loads of extra space just sitting around, and these moist, bacteria-laden seeds certainly were not going back into their packet. Frustrated, I went up to the old, shade-smothered, weed-infested area we used to call garden and got to work. I first attacked some weeks with a spade thinger and then made a little area that I covered in straw to kill any stragglers. I loosened up the dense clay and then planted about 20 more seeds. There was no more room anywhere. Determined not to let these 15-20 seeds just die, I washed them off and then put them on a paper towel to (hopefully) dry off and maybe remain viable. The type of bean is rather boring, Burpee's bush, but that's the type of bean my mom grew up with so she really wanted that one. I think next year I might go for a Purple Podded Pole. Those ones sure look fun, don't they? Yeah, I thought so, too.

So I can't remember if I posted about this yet so I'll pretend I haven't. One day, a few weeks ago, I was in the garden frolicking in the dirt and generally having a wee of a time when some of my straw mulch started moving. Rather disconcerted, I started to pick away at the straw to see a weird little mole pushing it's way out of the dirt. How dare it! Suddenly, the mole was no longer a mole and instead was two tiny little chipmunks. Good grief. Not only were chipmunks all over the yard digging little tunnels, they had already moved into MY garden. Of course, I couldn't do anything about them so I just gave them dirty looks and covered them back up with dirt. The next day or two there was a rabbit sitting next to my lettuce, which I promptly chased away threatening guns and warfare, seeing as the rabbit wasn't the one with the kids, it just wanted lettuce.

Today, I went to show my friend the cute little chipmunk babies to discover that 1) they were not chipmunks. 2) In the week or two since their discovery, they've grown to practically five times their original size and may be eating all of my lettuce. They must be doing it very sneakily because a plant hasn't disappeared yet, but hey. I know rabbits are sneaky. You never know. They need to move out like right now. I'm of course not going to do anything about them but I will be quite upset if my newly transplanted tomatoes get eaten. Here's some pictures of the cute little things, including one ironic one where it is hiding underneath my Forellenschuss.
Oh yeah. And did I mention how many of them there are? Five. Five rabbits and a mom! That is a lot of lettuce to eat....Isn't it cute? This one even let me pet it for a minute before it realized that I indeed was not a lettuce leaf, after which it launched itself headfirst into the metal side of a meat smoker before disappearing under a pine tree. Very endearing, but surely rather uncomfortable for that fuzzy little nose.