Garden Eviction

I hoped we could just share the garden.

Groundhog and gardener.  

I tried... to get along-

I really did. 

When the green beans started disappearing- ...

I grimaced.

The peas were trampled... pulled right off the fence.

-- "They were almost gone anyways"... I said.

But then the zucchini plants ... were almost completely destroyed.

Happy Jack, ... the garden gnome-

was knocked down time and time again.

The morning glories would get sheared off and then just 

when they started to grow again, it would start all over...

 sheared to the stem, leaf after sweet leaf.

... next the petunias... disappeared little by little.

-Along with the purple coneflowers.

Poof.

Gone in the night.

Here and there, cucumbers were tasted.

Not eaten completely... just nibbled enough

to ruin them.

 Then the  candylopes started gettting eaten..

I started to panic then.

Part of me really liked the idea of having a ground hog live under the shed.

But never did I have any idea what they're capable of. 

I didn't plant alot of candylopes.... 

but they're  the giant gurney hybrids and I love them!

So seeing this nearly brought tears to my eyes when ground hog

started eating them on the vine. 

A friend heard that putting pantyhose on melons can help,

-so I tried it.  

It was hard to put them on!

But I had to laugh at all the bellybuttons.

It worked for about a day and a half.

Then, ground hog would pluck them off the vine and carry them

right to where she would crawl under the shed.  She learned to pull

half the hose off and nibbled until the melon got small enough to fit under the shed.  

I'd find the pantyhose in a heap by the entrance.

The last straw however was a half eaten tomato.  

That's where I had to draw  the line.  

When we started setting the live trap;  groundhog would trip it

somehow and then shove it all over the place trying to get the fruit out.

So we drove to Atwoods and bought a much larger trap.  

We set it right in front of the potting shed.

Myguy drove two stakes in the ground on

both sides of the trap and wired the trap to the stakes.

That way;  groundhog couldn't shove it all over the place like it had before.

The  next morning, I could hardly believe my eyes.

 I seriously did a happydance.

A dance with giddy laughter.

Sheer joy.

Don't worry; noooo we did NOT  shoot her.  

But she was given her walking papers.  

She went to live in her new land.

Anyways, we're still neighbors --so to speak.

But she's not welcome to live in our garden anymore.

We set the trap again last night.  

So far; ... no  more.

The funny thing is the first night we set the larger trap;  ... I dreamt that

I went out to the garden and saw 40 of em.

40 groundhogs!

Thank goodness it was just all a bad dream.  

At least ...

let's hope it was.