The Mother was talking on the phone to the Elder Daughter who was now living far, far away. You know how mothers are. We like our adult children to feel we are content, safe, and healthy. This mother was no different. On this day, she was bragging about her veggie garden, her first. Now that the kids were all grown up and gone, the Mother needed some new hobbies, and growing veggies seemed like just the place to start.
"You won't believe it honey! I have cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, okra, swiss chard and eggplant coming up! It all looks so good! I'm so proud of myself! Next year, I’m going to plant corn!" The Mother was walking toward the front door as she bragged about her garden to the Elder Daughter.
“That’s so cool Mom! Can you send me pictures?”
“I’ll show you right now!”
The garden had been planted just outside the front door; the tiny front yard was the only place on the property with enough sun to grow vegetables. The Mother, remembering a tiny bit about gardening that she had learned from her Aunt Jane, had amended the soil in an eight by ten foot plot with five bags of of humus, and a cube of peat moss. The soil was dark, friable, moisture retentive, and fertile. The Mother had toiled diligently every day in her little veggie patch for a couple of weeks, planting, watering, pfutzing, and spreading the Love on her tiny charges for hours of every day. The day before this one, her seedlings, which she had started herself, had been thriving out in their little sunny patch in the front yard.
The first thing The Mother noticed as she stepped outside were two groundhogs (known as woodchucks to many around these parts) hightailing it in two straight lines away from the veggie plot and into the neighbor’s yard.
The next thing she noticed was – nothing.
There was nothing left in the garden but leafless stalks.
This is my entry to the Hive Garden Community's creative garden challenge for July. It is an embellished, but true, story.
Yes, I know the photo is of a red panda, but it captures the mood I hoped to set here!
Come join us, all you creative writer gardening types!!! @deirdyweirdy and @carolkean, I'd love to see what you do with this! I think the deadline is very soon though...
NOTHING! I felt her pain!!! That's EXACTLY what happened when I came back from holiday and looked at my broccoli patch after the rabbits snuck in. NNOTHING! Zilch! Nada!
Love it... a truly creative response and exactly what I'm talking about!
I'm glad you thought the other post was an entry, or I would have missed this challenge altogether. Isn't my title of the first one a hoot?! I had no idea that "disaster" was the prompt. It's a good thing there are plenty of disasters to write about.
Your broccoli was gone when you came back this time? Whenever I go away, even just overnight, I am very anxious about my garden and what I will find when I get back. I'm sorry you lost your broccoli. Will it come back?
What is it with rabbits and broccoli - all mine got devoured, too.
And the dogs - they no longer bother to chase these bunnies.
They still chase deer, which the dogs will NEVER catch.
In his younger days, Prince caught and killed a squirrel. ($400 vet bill for Prince's torn snout, the black leather of his nose slashed.)
To what lengths will we go to protect our gardens...?
Nature wins, one way or another.
Sun, wind, hail, not enough rain, critters.
Your haiku is perfect, by the way. :)
I'm hoping my dog will scare off rabbits and groundhogs. So far...
What haiku? Were you responding to me?
Isn't this a haiku?
lacy foliage
makes for unhappy humans
and happy beetles
Thank you!!!!
AHHH! This is a horror story to a hive gardener!
This dood is right on the other side of the fence from my garden and drives the dog nuts. He does like to visit our yard at night i think but has not ransacked my garden yet.
Now i am having visions of nothing!
You might want to set a trap for him. One of my friends makes a hole in her fence for him to get in, then places the trap right in front of it. These animals can do a trememdous amount of damage in a very short time!!! What I didn't put in my post was that, I put up a four foot fence to keep the groundhogs out. Everything started coming back, until the deer started jumping right over my little fence. That was not a good year, my first, in my veggie garden.
Oh no! Good thing I am shielded by a row of houses that are the deer barrier so I don't have to battle that.
Groundhogs only live a few years and I haven't got the heart to displace him. If he starts to screw with my garden, Imma get a trap and put it right in the door he made in our fence!
Your beds are fenced individually as I recall. That will at least slow him down.
Where I live, have to release any animals we trap on our own property, which is absurd.
🤣 she needs a bigger garden to feed her new friends!!!
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
Thank you!!
Great stuff! Very funny! And thanks for tagging me.
It's my pleasure! I love your garden posts. I love all your posts.
Ahh, am just imagining the kind of fury and anguish in that woman's face as there is nothing left in her small garden. It will be like a dream to her.
Congratulations. Wishing you the best
That would have been my face, and I was shocked! Dismayed! Really pissed off at those groundhogs! But I did learn a valuable lesson.
Those groundhogs sure are cute, but they are trouble in the garden.
We don’t have them here in Japan, so the first time my wife saw one in the States, she was like what the hell is that giant rat over there.
They do look a lot like giant rats. And they are as undesirable as giant rats if you ask me. Horrible creatures! I used to think my groundhogs were cute, and I even named them! I do not find them cute anymore.
It doesn’t take long for a cute animal to become a pest once they find your garden. I can’t believe how quickly even caterpillars (or Japanese beetles) can wipe out a patch of veggies.
The Japanese Beetles were scarce today. I hope that means they will be gone soon. Boy did I begin to despair from those! They left foliage lacy.
lacy foliage
makes for unhappy humans
and happy beetles
Well that went nicely into 5/7/5
lacy foliage
now your camouflage is gone
you’re done for beetles
Kind of a play on your violent beetle killing poem and this one. 😬
and there is your longer range vision, one of the things that makes you a poet. You see more than what is there. Nice one.
The brown, lacy leaves of Virginia creeper and wild grape,
the decimated rose blossoms,
the aftermath of the Japanese invaders.
I DECLARE WAR
It took several summers in a row of the soapy buckets, but the numbers really have dwindled.
Dare I confess: how gratifying it is to seize one by the head, squeeze, and watch its guts issue forth like toothpaste from a tube....
Your freewrite is epic, as always.
The Mother (not named) - the pesky daughters doubting her ability to live alone, remain independent - the Mother's confidence (she's almost saucy, feeling triumphant, ready to vindicate herself) followed by the door opening to the devastation and emptiness.
You always encapsulate so much emotion in so few words.
Bravo!
(and hugs)
Thanks #1 fan!
I used to sign all the notes I sent into school with or for my kids with The Mother. That is, until I got sick of signing things (or of my daughter losing points because I hadn't signed something) that I gave The Youngest a stamp of my signature so she could just sign everything herself. It took a couple years before we got caught.
I love you Stacey!!
The fake signature.... yeah, that's how much we value the oversight of
institutionalized public educationour esteemed SCHOOLS.I feel your pain, I planted gourds and did not put a fence around them, I did do this with the 3 I have left after the rabbits found them.
I don't have problems with bunnies, or I haven't yet anyway. I've got a fence around everything, that they could get under with a bit of effort. I know someday they will. Until then, I'm hoping my dog will be discouragement enough.
Gateway Garlic Farms posted this at Facebook:
Oops, I lost the photo... lost the original post...
Anyway, it's not working for me.
I have SO MANY NATIVE PLANTS to feed the bugs and birds and mammals.
No matter.
They go for my peas, carrots, celery, even my dang broccoli.
After that kind of a start in gardening, I am impressed you didn't just throw in the towel and give up!