The Enemy

In order to produce a garden, you have to get rid of the enemy.  Weather, rodents, deer, birds and bugs.  They all pose a threat.   This week we survived one of those threats...blackberry winter.  May 4th there was a light frost.  We debated about whether the temperature would drop low enough to kill the beans.  Tony has some ground cover that he could have laid over the tender plants.  Because Granny said she didn't think it would be a hard frost, he decided not to.  She was right.
  
Today, we faced another challenge.  Groundhogs!  In the twelve years Tony and I have been married, I have determined that there are only two things that will make him lose it...rats and groundhogs.  When he is faced with a rodent, he goes crazy mad and I am not exaggerating.  He will do whatever it takes to get rid of it.  He makes John Belushi look sensible!  So when Granny called and said she saw two groundhogs, he grabbed the gun and bullets and took off.  He has said, he will lose his religion over a groundhog.  Seriously.

You have to see the big picture.  The garden is behind three chicken houses.  There are stacks of rotting wood on one side of the garden and on the other side is an old trailer.  The combination of these three things gives groundhogs the perfect place to build dens.  The mama groundhog digs a hole and goes in to have her babies.  All those groundhogs are just waiting on us to plant the garden and as soon as the small plants come up, the groundhogs will eat every one of them.  They are alot bigger animals than you think they are and they can mow down a row of beans in one night.  Granny says, "thur hateful"!

In years past, Tony has set steel traps for these 'hogs.  He'll place the traps on either side of the hole.  He has gotten lucky many times.  But, you have to be patient, something he runs short of when it comes to animals eating his garden.  One year, he had one cornered in a den and he stuck the barrel of the gun down in the den and started shooting.  I starting screaming, "STOP, STOP!!!"  He took me to the house and told me to stay there.  He lost his mind that night and I decided when he is hunting 'hog, I'm staying inside.

This afternoon, Tony bush hogged around the garden.  He knew with the grass cut down, he would be able to see the groundhogs running to the garden. So, tonight when Granny called to tell us she saw two groundhogs "playing" in the grass he had mowed,  he was ready.  We went straight to Granny's and he got off a shot and missed.  Granny said he need to just start shooting.  Don't worry, Granny, that's exactly what he'll do!