in which there is good news and bad news

The good news first, I suppose.
It will be evident to all that things look different around here. I updated the look of my blog!! I just love the background I found and the photo (which is not mine, but found in a Google search and shamelessly stolen). Feel free to tell me if you like the change. I probably won't pay any attention to naysayers, though. heh. :)

Tragedy has struck the veggie patch at the demo garden. 2 weeks ago it was discovered that the artichoke had an enemy. When I planted it it had four large, beautiful, silver-green leaves. It's such a dramatic plant! I was really looking forward to watching it thrive. I returned the next week to find only two leaves on the plant. Well, there had been some windy weather so I thought maybe that was the culprit and it still looked healthy, so I figured it would be fine. Not so. The next time I went to tend the patch, the other two leaves had been torn off!! And the kicker was that the culprit had not even had the decency to eat the leaves he mangled! He just left them lying there next to the plant to taunt me. Curse his hide! Audrey and Dianne and the rest of the gardeners examined the carnage and gathered other clues:

1. little holes dug here and there in the bed
2. peanut shells found near the scene of the crime
3. one of the present gahtering stated that the local squirrel population had been observed burying their stash in the garden last fall

We came to the conclusion that the guilty party must have been a squirrel. Why a squirrel would want to bother my artichoke is completely beyond me! I guess I just don't think of them as being garden pests. Bunnies, maybe - I deal with bunnies at my garden at home - but I haven't ever seen bunnies at the demo garden. Also, I would think a bunny would have, like I said before, the good decency to eat at least part of the leaf instead of being so wasteful.

The poor 'choke was well and truly shorn, but not completely beyond hope. Small new leaves were present that would quickly replace those that were lost if given half a chance. So we came up with a plan to foil further destructive attacks from our unthrify assailant. A protective cage was constructed out of wooden stakes and plastic caging held together with twine. Not beautiful, but functional. For 2 weeks there was no further damage. I stopped worrying about the artichoke and bent my efforts to eliminating slugs from the cabbages. The cage was doing it's job and the plant was thriving.

Or so I thought. Until today.

Today I went to water and found ... nothing. Nothing!! There was a hole chewed through the netting on one side of the cage and the artichoke was no more. Chewed down to a dirty nub. Gone.

So this evening we mourn the loss of a beloved vegetable. Cut down before he had a chance to really live. His passing leaves a gaping hole in our hearts matched only by the hole in the northeast corner of the vegetable patch. He will be sorely missed.

Fin.