If we were keeping score, the animals would be winning. They have seriously damaged all previous gardening attempts and appear to be outsmarting us humans yet again. After having woodchucks eat the corn, a deer eat the asparagus and rabbits eat the green beans last year, we had decided that the garden area definitely would require a fence. Instead of building a new deer-proof fence, we decided that we would section off a part of the goat yard, which already has a goat-tested fence and grow the most vulnerable garden crops inside there.

Because we weren't sure it was going to work, we constructed our divider fence out of materials on hand: chicken wire, more metal fence posts, and whatever heavy objects we could find to anchor down the bottom--landscape timbers, heavy boards, blocks, sections of trees. Let me just confess that nothing says "hillbilly" quite like a cobbled together fence. It's a thang of beauty. But my feeling is that if I can grow a good garden...correction, I always GROW a good garden; what I want is to actually harvest and eat it, and if I can do that, I don't care that the fence looks like a Jeff Foxworthy joke. We can build a better fence later...if this indeed works.

So far the chickens found a way under it and scratched up all the early crops. We fixed that. Then for a few days I found an occasional juvenile goat in there. We fixed that. I think. Then I planted the main season stuff, and waited. Nothing. Three weeks. I have never had seeds take this long to come up before so I thought I'd been robbed again, but just as I was giving up hope, a few seedlings began to appear. Corn. Squash. Cutting Flowers. Ahh, at last. The beans were a loss. I think my seed was old, but encouraged to actually have something coming up, I replanted beans and weeded and watered.

And today Doa, the local deer, got in the garden. She didn't eat any of the plants. It was just that she could have , and she was showing me that she could. Well, anyhow, we'll see. I'm thankful for farmer's markets and even grocery stores. Something tells me I will be needing them this year.

On a happier note, it is May! The woods here are full of trillium, bellwort, and may apples. On my ramblings I see the occasional sweet betsy, toadshade and solomon's seal. The pastures have a pretty sprinkling of wood sorrel and indian strawberry. I saw my first indigo buntings of the season this week, those tiny little impossibly blue birds. They are very shy and flit into the feeders and out so quickly it always makes me wonder if I really saw it. And the hummers have returned in force. Unlike the buntings, they are very bold and very agressive. My husband says they have a Napoleon complex. Maybe, but they are mesmerizing and we sit on the porch and watch them every evening.

Tradition says we have one more "winter" to get through, blackberry. The berries are blooming now, but I don't think we'll have any very cold weather. Actually a little break from the heat would be nice, especially if we could get some rain in the bargain.