A Rant

I give up, I give up, I give up!

I can't even begin to do justice to the feelings of helplessness overwhelming me this morning.

You all know I have been struggling with the garden. The spring garden was first pillaged by the chickens. We put a temporary, flimsy fence around it to keep goats and chickens alike out. The fence didn't even have a real door, we had to disassemble the fence a bit to get in and out. To keep the goats off the fence we surrounded it with hot wire. It didn't take long to figure out the garden was not going to recuperate in the Texas heat of July and August so I took the hot wire down and opened the fence up for the goats to clear the rest of the garden and get rid of some of the weeds. Well, in this process the goats managed to tear up the fence around the garden.

A week ago I decided it couldn't be put off any longer; I needed to get the fall garden put in. I fixed up the fence with the help of Stef and hooked up the hot wire. I was completely stumped with what to do about all of the weeds in the garden area though. The goats had eaten them down but without the goats they would come back. Let me tell you, these are not just ordinary weeds. These are stickers or sand burrs or weeds from the very depths of hell, whichever you prefer. You simply cannot just pull them up. They grow a foot a day. If you till them they still come back. So after telling Stef then that I give up on the garden and then him telling me I couldn't, I decided to just cover the entire garden with plastic. Clear plastic for any spot that was not growing garden produce and black landscape fabric for where plants would be. Not pretty and I really don't know how practical or even long term it is but I did it. Then I went to the nursery and got plants. Tomatoes, green peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, collard greens, mustard greens, cabbage, broccoli, and my favorite red peppers (I really had to hunt these down). Stef and I got the fence really patched up and I finally get my garden in. Planting in the plastic was not easy. I start watering everything and found that the landscape fabric that is suppose to be water permeable, isn't. At least not enough to water from the top. Ok, fine. I say once again to Stef it is not worth it, I GIVE UP. He said no. He would go out and put down the drip tape underneath the fabric. While he was at it he also put a real door in the fence for easy in and out. Ok,fine.

This morning, after chores, I went for a little peak at the garden....I give up, I give up, I give up.

The new door Stef put on the garden fence apparently didn't have a lock, and the hot wire was apparently not put back up around the fence after installation of said door. The goats had been in the garden. Little tell tale goat berries lay everywhere. Good news is they don't like eggplant (just pulled them up by the stem and left them on the ground)and they also left most of the cucumbers and tomatoes alone. Bad news they do like greens, and broccoli and cabbage and they LOVE pepper plants. Especially, apparently, red peppers. Not one is left.

I can't keep putting this much effort, not to mention cash, into the garden for it to get ruined. I'm not sure what we will do now. I guess I will just be an even more frequent buyer at the farmer's market. Better my time and money go there than into the stomachs of any 2 or 4 legged fiends around here.