My Gardening Nemesis

I haven't had the best luck gardening this year.  I got off to a promising start.  I started my seeds back in March.  I was oh-so-enthusiastic after not gardening for the past five years to get back into things.  I set up my little trays and had 120 plants all ready to go in the ground before I left for California.

While I was in California, Paul watered the plants for me.  Each day I asked how it was going and he would say, "oh the plants in the side yard are okay, but the plants in the backyard aren't doing so great."

That's odd, I thought.  The backyard is full sun.  The side yard is half sun (if that).  I planted the plants in the side yard that were left over since I didn't have enough room in the backyard.

Midway through the trip Paul said something about hoping half the plants would survive.

What?  I thought.  In California pretty I'd had a close to 100% success rate... and my worries had been deer and jack rabbits and ground squirrels and bears who might take down the fence.  And my sweet little heirloom seedlings had been thriving when I'd left.  What in our little city patch of land could be killing my plants.  The soil?

I came home and found that around five plants were still alive.  The others looked as if they'd been brutally murdered by something with sharp teeth and a passion for greens.

I've been glaring at the squirrels for the past month.

And then I looked out and saw this guy chilling in my garden having lunch? (On what? I might ask him, because while he's left 1 cilantro plant alone, everything else has been more or less destroyed).

I snapped pictures through my window and then snuck outside to get a close up:

Here's one of the photos I snapped through the window which show his tail:

He turned around, saw me, and ran for... a small hole under our garage.

Awesome.

My first though was "marmot" only because I'd heard of marmots growing up but wasn't exactly sure what they looked like.  My mom suggested a ground hog.  Facebook votes from the south came in with nutria and muskrat (I didn't post the tail picture since it was fuzzy).  Then I found the Wikipedia page for Groundhogs (which includes marmots and woodchucks) and had the answer.  This little guy is definitely a Whistle Pig (my favorite name for a woodchuck).

So I'm walking around the house with the words "how much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?" going through my head.

No wonder my garden was a flop this year.  This not-so-little guy is using it as his own personal salad bowl.

Can I admit now that I've caught myself trying to think of a name for our little Whistle Pig?

Sadie prefers the made up name of Didinia that she came up with and has begun using...

And that is our Saturday afternoon excitement... now back to making sure Patrick doesn't smash his little fingers since he's been insisting on playing with blocks...

Will the Governator and His Delta Plans Ruin My Chances of Having a Garden?

Today I feel much better! I didn’t take Tylenol last night (breaking the headache at night, take a Tylenol, wake up sick, cycle) and this morning the “morning sickness” had completely vanished.

I’m starting to think about planning this year’s garden and I’m determined to find a happy medium. I’ve had a vegetable garden for three of the last four years.

In 2006 I struggled to break up the hard packed dirt and then plant and fertilize two small, heavily fenced plots (we have some very aggressive plant eating deer here, who just aren’t satisfied with the huge area of pasture grass my parents planted for them).

In 2007 I went a bit overboard. I started early and planted all the seeds I could in my grandparents’ abandoned green house in January. And with the years of compost in the green house those little seeds flourished. I transplanted the 90+ tomato plants, along with the bell peppers, Anaheim peppers and eggplants and then added carrots and radishes, pumpkins, gourds, watermelon, cantaloupe, zucchini and cucumbers to the mix when the freezing weather passed. The garden was enormous (I’d bought 300 feet of deer fencing) and produced enough to keep our house and the local soup kitchen supplied. However it was a full time job. (Today’s pictures are from 2007.)

In 2008 I knew my limits. I was enormously pregnant (with a 9lb+ baby) and I barley waddled outside often enough to keep my herb garden alive.

This past year, 2009, my dad built a raised garden in our yard (we’re the only ones with a deer fence) and mom took care of it. I helped a little bit, but for the most part she did all of the work. Sadie especially enjoyed stealing pumpkins from Nani.

I would like to have a small garden this year. I’m event tempted to clean out the green house (which would be a huge project, because we have these annoying trees called “Trees of Heaven” that are classified as noxious weeds in our county and they sprout everywhere, including in the green house… it would take a lot of muscle to reclaim the space).

Unfortunately there are other drawbacks. With over 50% of our water going to Southern California to fill their sparkling blue swimming pools (it’s amazing how you would need to go through a half dozen agencies to put in a pond here, but you can put in a pool there with a permit, despite the drought) we aren’t left with much (I bet the farms would get more water if the the swimming pools and golf courses got less!). Our well goes dry every single year, pumping silt and mud into the house (not pleasant if you’re the one in the shower when it happens and it happens frequently). The lakes are nearly dry despite the rain and they keep sending more water south in the canal.

Worse, the Governator is now campaigning to pass a “Save the Delta” plan that would take nearly all the remaining water from the local watersheds to rehabilitate the Delta. The funny thing is, that they’re very concerned about the well being of the Smelt, a two-inch long fish that lives in the Delta. But I wonder what will happen to the salmon and trout in the Trinity and Sacramento Rivers with further reductions (I’ve heard 90% of the water would be headed south instead of the paltry 50% they already take). The economies in many of the counties in our area depend heavily on fishing tourism and will be destroyed if the water and fish are gone.

I don't understand much of the logic behind environmentalist politics. Save on portion of the state by sacrificing another. Save one tiny fish by sacrificing entire eco-systems.

And of course any garden will be out of the question if water becomes that scarce.

I guess I’ll start planning and planting and hope it keeps raining. If my garden survives, it survives. No thanks to the California water politics (wow, I didn’t even know this was going to be a “Save the Delta” rant when I started!).