When I planted lettuce and pea seeds in late March, I made a note on my gardening calendar that seedlings should emerge by April 7, maybe earlier.
It was a bold move, I know. Nothing ever happens the way it's supposed to in my garden. But the little paper packets had authoritative statements about how many days until seedlings and how many days until harvest, as if it's a genetic certainty.
Optimism runs high in early spring, and when I looked out the window on April 7, I truly expected to see rows of green in the soil.
I did not. April 8 came and went. Nothing. April 9? Still nothing.
The only thing that has happened in my garden since I planted those seeds is that the posts I hastily stuck in the ground for a future pea trellis tipped over in the wind.
Beside the garden, the cardboard I was using in a poorly executed plan to kill the grass has blown away for a second time.
Taken together, the bare soil, heaps of soggy cardboard and scattered posts make my house look like it's on its way to becoming that weird place in the next town over where stinky cows wander around a junkyard of rusted tractors, cars parts and piles of old lawn furniture. What's up with that house?
Anyway, my only hope is that the flowers blooming in my front yard go a long way toward distracting my neighbors from the mess that is my backyard.
That only works, though, if my flowers survive. No sooner had my crocuses pushed their way up through the mulch this spring than the wiry green leaves got munched back to the ground. I recognize those tooth marks. The rabbits are back!
My feelings toward the wild rabbits in our neighborhood are complicated by the fact that my only pets are a pair of indoor rabbits: two picky rabbits who eat only premium hay from the local independent pet store and for whom I have to buy vegetables every week at the grocery store. One of the main reasons I'm growing a garden is to save money on greens and parsley for my pets.
When the wild rabbits help themselves to the things I plant, it puts me in a surly anti-rabbit mood.
Last year the wild rabbits ate my pea plants. I fenced the garden as a result and this year, if those seedlings ever emerge, perhaps I will win that battle.
But the crocuses? I forfeit. I can't put a fence around every flower bed.
No, I just have to forget about the crocuses and move on to the daffodils. They're opening up now and, fortunately, the rabbits don't seem to be interested.
Too bad that guy with the cows in his junkyard doesn't have daffodils. Pretty flowers go a long way toward covering up a mess.
Julie Kirkwood is a freelance writer for The Eagle-Tribune. Her column, Yard Dirt, appears most weeks in At Home, Sunday North. She also keeps a gardening blog, Yard Dirt: Sharing Seeds, at www.eagletribune.com.
