Organic gardening and its sorrows

Since I moved to the US one of my new enterprise was to start a vegetable garden, since for the first time I have a big enough garden and sufficient time to dedicate to it. With the help of my great neighbor and friend P. I am slowly getting up to speed, not to mention the tips given by my Dad an avid gardener who has been working the earth for as long as I can remember.

I have started all my vegetables from seeds, back in March/April and in early May I planted a few of my seedlings in the outside garden beds hoping that by the time I would return from Europe 6 weeks later mother nature would have done its work and I could look forward to a bountiful crop.

Well mother nature had other plans in store for me, it stayed cold and rainy until I came back and when I did in June nothing really took off except a few lettuces, the rest simply died or went into seeds as soon as the good weather finally settled in. So upon my return mid June I started seeding again and finally after a month I am a very happy apprentice gardener with greens in my 3 raised beds.

From the May plantation I had some leeks that P. gave me and they had not been doing so well until the past couple of weeks where they were really growing due to the fantastic summer weather we are experiencing for the past 3 or 4 weeks.

That is until yesterday... My other half calls me out to the garden and asks: what have you done to your leeks? me: nothing...??? Why? I look over and see the leeks lying on their sides, so I think they must have had too much sun and I had forgotten to water them that morning, then I took a closer look and horror! they were all chopped off just above the earth, very neat job.

I was besides myself wondering who did the dirty dead.

Well I have a couple of suspects: a chipmunk that I saw the previous day and then today I saw a mountain beaver doing the same thing to a tiger Lily and dragging it to it's hole. So I think no need to look further I have my culprit.

I will now post my valiant knight (that is Jewel the dog) in front of the beaver hole to keep watch over my garden.

"I know that beaver is in there!"