a little backyard ... mice, berries, & gardening

Buddy, my son, is on his way to a promising pest-control career. (It might have better success than his enterprise of selling sticks for kindling ~ no one stopped at the "store" he set up ... which was made by tying colorful yarn around three trees to form a triangle pen where he and his sisters waited for customers with little bundles of sticks tied together.) Anyway ... to my surprise, Buddy killed a mouse in our yard on Monday. Then, to my greater surprise, he captured a second mouse on Tuesday! I'll spare you any further details .... except that Halo gets credit as the assistant in this mouse-catching affair. (I sure hope there were only two mice residing here!)

The girls and I went berry-picking last night ... and it was the first time I brought Foofie along this summer. She was really into it ~ and talked about it for the rest of the evening until her very late bedtime. Above, she is happily displaying the evidence of a berry sweet time.


Our garden appears to be coming along rather nicely despite many issues: a novice head gardener with little time for gardening (I think that's me), pesky and persistant weeds, hordes of ants (fire ants?) trying to set up house in our garden, and numerous deer and that visit our yard ... with only a dilapidated chicken-wire fence to deter these animals. (My children have gradually trampled the fence almost down to the ground.) The deer and/or rabbits gobbled everything up last year ... so I'm amazed that the plants are still around!




When we spontaneously decided to try a garden again this year, we just planted what we had on hand ~ oodles of cantaloupe, several carrots, a few beans, and a couple of squash. Food plants amaze me ... the way God has created a tiny seed and "programmed" it to grow into a larger plant, and bear fruit, and make seeds to grow more ~ it's simply fascinating!