Fog rolls out

What a beautiful weekend.  I woke early Saturday to the sound of rain.  By the time I got up and made coffee it was done.  I got an early start on projects.  Pulling out veggies in the garden and discovering the Raccoons or Squirrels or both had gone ahead and harvested most of the corn, consumed it and left the cobs all over for me.

I didn’t get as much corn as I had hoped as you may recall the Raccoon destroyed a lot of the stalks earlier this summer.  My back yard is completely fenced in, at least a six foot fence, my neighbors garden is in his front yard, fenced in by a cute little decorative picket fence, a fence I could step over.  His corn is huge, ears that Dumbo would be jealous of.  No Raccoons have even bugged his garden.  In fact I am sure they have traipsed right past that beautiful garden to climb my six fence and destroy my garden.  I can only assume it is so I can continue to have a blogging topic.

I did salvage some of the corn before pulling it all out and had some for dinner tonight, yummy!  I got a lot of the veggies pulled out.  There are so many ripe still good tomatoes on the vines so I only pulled out one before I stopped and will pick them this week and then will finish pulling them out.

I got the yards all mowed and was at Lowes quite early this morning, dropped some of my overtime money on sod soil, grass seed to over seed some vinca minor starts I’m gonna plant in front to sore up a little hill and a few other things for projects (cement patch and black top patch.)

I filled holes in the back yard (Missy and friends yard) with the soil.  By the end of summer the dogs do quite  number on this yard.  But it is theirs, so I fill all the divots and overseed it in fall.  Last year it worked quite well and I used a seed that was for full sun and hot areas and although the grass finally died in spots it stayed green much longer then the other yards.  This gives Missy cool grass to lay in during the summer.

Thing is the two bags of soil didn’t fill nearly all the little holes so back I went this evening and bought four more bags.  But after all the work before today’s “Gorey” football game and a 2.5 mile walk with Missy all I had in me was the energy to unload them and take a hot shower.

I stopped working in the garden about 1pm to come in and watch the Seahawks lose to Frank Gore, well the whole 49ers team but really it was Gore that did them in.  Two long touch down runs, 79 and 80 yards.  Crazy.

Since I have to be at work at 5:30 tomorrow morning, I be heading to bed here soon even though it’s not even dark.  I am exhausted enough however I don’t think I’ll have any trouble falling asleep.

Rats!

I got 10, TEN hours of sleep last night and got up at 9 a.m.  There is so much on my “to-do” list.  But I am just taking the day pretty slow.  So far I’ve managed to sweep the kitchen and do some watering.  The front flower bed was easiest because I turned on the sprinkler and focused on keeping the couch from floating away.

I went out to water the vegetables and found more eaten beets.  Scattered around greens and eaten beets and beets still in the ground but half eaten, however, no sign of Raccoons.

A little background, yesterday morning when I was getting ready to go work the parade I looked out the bedroom window to gazing at the garden which I was wishing I could spend the day in and my raspberry plants were moving around.  I watched and thought I saw a squirrel.  But the ultra sonic cat thing is doing a pretty good job of keeping out the squirrels.  Besides it was really rummaging around low and the squirrels usually come in from above.  I went out there before leaving and parted the plants couldn’t see anything except possible hole in the ground where a rat may be coming in from the neighbors side which is quite overgrown with blackberries.

I quickly went out to the shed to find a rat trap, because although I will take spiders out of my house and not kill them and  I refuse to do anything to harm the Raccoons and just try and deter them and once the “re-homing” them a few years ago, I have no problem killing rats.   You can tell I’m not a Buddhist because there isn’t even an attempt to do anything else.  Needless to say I didn’t have any traps.  I did have a block of rat poison (Do Not Judge Me) and I took it out and set it on the bricks around the raspberries.

So this morning when I went out to water the block of poison was gone and the damage to the beets was extreme.  After more investigation in the raspberry bed I am sure it was a rat, or more then one.

The entire row of red beets is pretty much gone, the golden ones are just getting big enough to eat so maybe they will be safe and I’ll get some of those.  I will be replanting the beets and a few other things this week.  Hopefully we will have enough warm weather left this summer and into fall to get two full harvests.

Beet Shrapnel

Guess the Raccoons have moved on from the strawberries to the beets.
Today there were dug up and chewed up beets EVERYWHERE.

Cant my neighbors leave some un-secure garbage around for them to feed off of.  Maybe Mary’s idea of just leaving dog food in the front yard would keep them happy and out of the garden and pool.  I guess I would have to leave a kiddy pool of water out there also for them to bathe in.  Its starting to sound like a sane idea.

5am swim

No, not me, the Raccoons.

The upstairs windows were all opened last night and about 5:15 this morning, I heard the distinct sound of claws on the fence.  Missy started barking and I got up and looked out the window.

What I saw was a huge water spot right at the entrance to the pool and paw prints leading away toward the house and under the diving board.  I could see the big raccoon lumbering across my neighbors back yard. My initial thought was well if the cool new ultrasonic motion activated cat repellent is keeping them out of the garden I will just give up on the pool.  Yes it means more maintenance for me, yes it means more cleaning but if they leave the veggies and fruits alone I would be fine with that.

However, as soon as I was back in bed I heard a huge crash.  Got back up and looked out the window to see the other, yes the other raccoon on the fence by the garden.  The crash was the top rail breaking off under its weight.

This morning I find completely smoshed corn stalks, broken fence and trampled beets and carrots.

Now What?

On a happier note, I am already harvesting zuccinni, here is the one I grilled for lunch.  Also beans, chard, carrotts, beets although they are small, lettuce, spinach and beans.