Protection -- at Least for the Moment

So, I finally cried "UNCLE"!  After watching my bean rows transformed from lush plants to toothpick villages and eventually to bare ground; after discerning that the real and nibblesome reason my spinach and chard and lettuces weren't developing, I admitted defeat.  A sad and desultory trip to Lowes filled the pickup bed with 5 50-foot rolls of 36" chicken wire and a requisite stack of metal posts.  This after an earlier and utterly silly foray to the party store for a supply of mylar pinwheels and whirlygigs I placed strategically around the garden in hopes that the shiny movement would scare the marauders away.  The fact that I was now hauling chicken wire home attests to the measure of their success.

The near-record setting heat of the afternoon notwithstanding, I began the scratchy and cumbersome business of unfurling the rolls into their new occupation as "rabbit prevention."  All this to augment the existing fence that was billed as "effective against rabbits, raccoons and deer." 

Well, to their credit, I haven't noticed any raccoon damage. 

And the deer, I suppose, are perhaps deterred to a modest degree, or simply haven't found it in their interests to breach the barrier.  And why should they?  The rabbits have already beaten them to the dinner table.  It was with only minor humor that we plotted to trap and butcher the little devils.  They would, we were assured, be plump and nourishing.  They had, after all, fed on the best.

Lori's arrival home from work and shift into garden clothes was helpfully timed to intervene before my profanity poisoned the remaining crop and before my exhaustion cut the effort short.  Another hour and the metal encasement was finally secured.  All I'm missing now is concertina wire along the top.

Later, enjoying dinner on the deck, Lori noticed movement in the grass out back.  With fear, trembling, and fervent prayers, we crept to the railing to survey the garden environs.  Indeed, four rabbits were busily -- hungrily -- reconnoitering the situation from outside the fence.  They poked here, then there, then around to another side.  Clearly they had come to assume free access.  Eventually, they backed away and resigned themselves to a commoner's dinner of grass blades. 

I'm not totally delusional.  I have every expectation that eventually the rabbits will find or create a new way inside my culinary wonderland.  They are, I anticipate, resourceful and persistent adversaries.  In the meantime the chicken wire affords me a fighting, albeit ugly, chance.  It would be nice to see something from all this horticultural investment actually make it to our table.