Sunday, August 05, 2012

Sympathy for Mr McGregor

Growing up and reading the Peter Rabbit series by Beatrix Potter, I always of course sided with Peter and his bunny friends against that mean old Mr McGregor.  And still I'm not of fan of Mr McGregor and his desire to eat the flopsy bunnies in a pie when he found them sleeping on his compost pile.  I'm so glad they out smarted him.
HOWEVER, today I sure felt some sympathy for Mr McGregor.  I have been working and worrying over my summer garden since our terrible hail storm took the entire thing out.  We have a very short growing season here and having to start over from scratch is quite depressing.
So I was all giddy when I noticed that my cherry tomatoes were producing and that one this morning was dark orange.  I was all excited for my very first tomato of the season in a day or two.

UNTIL I got home from church today and noticed that a bird had not only ATE almost all of this tomato, but that it had also munched on the neighboring totally green tomato!  That's what gets me the most mad about these little thieves...they aren't even patient enough to wait until the fruit or veggy is even ripe!
We were hoping that with the hail storm knocking out all the apples and cherries this year that perhaps the birds would have moved on to greener pastures and we could have our second harvest.  Apparently NOT.  All the apples that weren't knocked out of the tree have damage on them, but there was still the hope that perhaps I could make apple sauce from what remained.  Ummm NO!  The birds and yellow jackets are eating them.  The other day there was a full murder of crows in the apple tree, all munching away on green apples.  No they're not at all ripe yet...normally they don't ripen until September.

So since I'm not using the bird net on the cherry tree this year...the cherries are toast from the hail.  I grabbed my net and put it over my poor little garden.  I wonder how many of those pesky thieves will get stuck still trying to steal MY veggies?

2 comments:

  1. I'm back online and trying to get caught up. :) You have the greediest most thoughtless birds! What a disappointment about the tomatoes. I know you've not had the best of luck with them, so it's hard not to be hopeful.

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  2. I have the same problem with birds but marmots and gophers are the real thieves. They eat the tops of our beets, carrots and potatoes. I'm about as good of a hunter as Elmer Fudd so the beasts pretty well have a banquet every day on our precious veggies.

    Maybe you should raise bees if you have apple trees? Or crow pie doesn't sound that bad.

    Good luck.

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