Where's my napalm?

It's WAR, I tell you!  Between the slugs and chipmunks, I will be lucky if I get one goshdarn strawberry.  I opened the front curtains this morning and, lo and behold, there sat a fat-assed chipmunk chewing away on a strawberry.  Right in front of the window.  And he/she was staring at me in a very cheeky manner. 

The Victims.  If you bigify, you will see where their nasty
little rodent teeth chewed little bits off my strawberries.

I immediately went into the laundry/gardening/tool/storage/everything else room and got my bag of organic blood meal.  Looks like I will have to sprinkle the perimeter of the strawberry bed every other day.  They already got every. single. one. of my red currants.  Apparently, they either don't care for the black currants or haven't fastened their beady little eyes on them yet.  I have put up bird netting and now liberally sprinkle blood meal around them.  Next up is the barbed wire and vicious dogs. 

The chicken wire fencing did keep the rabbits out of my cold frame and herb bed and all the raised beds (except the garlic, which they apparently don't care for), and I almost had myself convinced (deluded is more like it) that it was safe to let the chickens out for a free range in front.  Good thing I read Carolyn Renee's post first.  It might have tipped me over the edge.

Enough of the ugliness of gardening!  Let's move on to something more heartening - like flowering things!  It always seems to happen the same way: everything just pokes along and you fret over it, then one morning you come out and everything is in bloom.  Here's some of what's blooming on the Little Lucky Farm:

Cucumbers are flowering.

Taters are flowering.

Love my geraniums!

Martha Washington Geranium.

Curly parsley and nasturtiums.

I take the geraniums inside every winter and then plant them in a big pot outside my front door.  There's nothing like something pretty at the door to perk you up!  The Martha Washington geranium is new to me this year.  Seems like they are the "hot" item locally.  Of course, having almost zero willpower in nurseries (or anywhere else), I bought one - they are pricey, as are all 'hot' things.  I am pretty disappointed.  It will be my first and last.  A friend has a scented geranium that I love - it's Citronella.  I may pester her for a cutting or two.  I am trying edible window boxes this year - I have to check the drainage, however, as the foliage is looking a bit peaky.    I will do a more 'comprehensive' garden post later this week.  That is, if I don't wake up some morning and find everything's been eaten to the ground.

I've been robbed!

As if dealing with the 'spit-mobile' wasn't enough ugliness for the week, I came home to find that my lettuce had been pinched.  Eaten.  Gnawed.  Stolen from me!  Muttering about the terrible things I was going to do to the little buggers, I rounded the corner of the house to find -- they had eaten my parsley, too!!!!  (Cue in Elmer Fudd singing to the Loony Toon rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries - "Kill the Wabbit!  Kill the Wabbit!")

Thought this was safe in the coldframe - maybe the large, succulent
lettuce leaves waving ripely from their pot was just too
much of a temptation.

Radicchio centers - gone.

If you can bigify this, you will notice the nekkid parsley stems.

I have noticed that the rodentia population is rampant this spring.  I have gotten over the cuteness of chipmunks - all 500 of them - after they chewed down my sunflower starts for the fifth time.  I am beyond over the not-so-cuteness of the ratties (see #5).  I am now narrowing my sights on the dwindling cuteness of the army of rabbits that skitter across the homestead.  Of course, I know that rabbits + lettuce = they win/you lose.  That is why I planted my lettuce in a coldframe with 12+ inch sides.  They scaled the ramparts!  They also found the one little hole I missed that led them into my herb bed.  Ergo - scalped parsley.

Sunflower seedlings cut off at the seed (bigify if you dare - it's not pretty). 
However, Morning Gloriesmust not be on the
 chipmunk diet - they were not touched.

It's a good thing I am a morning person.  I had to squeeze in rabbit-proofing my coldframe and herb bed.  Just as I was ready to pat myself on the back for winning another battle, I came across my bee balm.  Something has eaten all the buds off the stems.  But wait!  There's more - some'one' had completely unscrewed the bottom of my hummingbird feeder.  What the...?!  I am thinking squirrels, as a bear would have ripped the sucker off the holder and smashed it.  Uncle already!!

For your viewing pleasure - the 6+ lb. piece (all one
piece) of matted, felted llama fleece that came off
of the mad camel on Monday.