The Unsuspected Culprit

Quit often when I’m blogging my thoughts wander and I want to stray off topic.  If I allowed myself to do this I think there would be some very lengthy posts.  When this happens I try to remember the thought that would have lead me off topic and post it as a separate topic – which is where this post comes from.

We all have pests that threaten our gardens by damaging and eating the crops before harvesting.   Some pests we anticipate and others we don’t.  The ones we don’t anticipate can vary in height, weight and overall appearance.  These pests (or pesters) can be referred to as children, husbands (or wives), or even family pets and can all have an effect on your garden without you even realizing they are cause!

Some examples are as follows:

(1)    When my brother was little he loved broccoli; he referred to them as “trees.”  Back in the day when my mom had a garden and he was little, he would sneak into the garden and pick and eat the small broccoli.  I remember my mom wondering what was eating all her broccoli – a little pester named Ben, that’s who!

(2)    My family used to have a chocolate lab named Jessie.  Jessie would eat anything, once she even ate a bar of soap. (maybe that was Elsa…)  She was a smart dog and she knew she wasn’t allowed in the garden.  Jessie also loved carrots.  She would watch us pull carrots in the garden and once in a while we would give her one.  And then one day we watched her belly crawl into the garden (so she wouldn’t be seen) pull out a mouth full of carrots, crawl out and go hide under a tree to eat her pickings. 

Jessie also loved raspberries.  She would lay in the shade of the raspberry plants, pretending to sleep, and eat any berry she could reach. (This might have been our other lab Elsa, or possibly both!)

As I type this I can hear my Mom saying that it’s our fault the dog ate the carrots and raspberries because we would feed them to her.   And maybe it was our fault but she did some picking and eating on her own too.

(3)    Every time we venture into the garden Steve ends up eating some pea pods that are not fully mature. I know it’s hard to not sample everything (I admit I am guilty of this), but if you let things grow to maturity you’ll end up with so much more!  Steve’s hunting buddy even picked a hand full of pea pods one time he was out for visit.  It was funny to see him hide them as I gave Steve heck for picking the peas.

So if one day you discover things missing in your garden don’t be too quick to blame it on the bugs or deer, the real culprit might be standing right beside you!