Cleaning up

Just a brief stint in the garden today, weeded some beds, re-seeded lettuce, mache, and kohlrabi, and cleaned up some old collard plants. All the lower leaves were half eaten; I suspect the mice that I've been seeing a lot of lately, there appears to be some kind of population explosion. Last spring, we temporarily housed a gopher snake in our fava bean plot- it was great. After loosing about 90 % of our winter plantings to gophers, the snake took care of business and we had almost no losses for the rest of the summer (with the exception of a few tomato plants). I am hoping that he or she will return and conduct some more biologic warfare on our behalf. We briefly toyed with the idea of trapping gophers and mice. However, after a little demonstration of how the trap works by our (semi-pro) garden neighbor, we decided that even loosing 90 % of our plants somehow couldn't justify essentially impaling a sentient creature and letting it die a slow and very painful death. I know many will disagree, but since my family doesn't depend on the food, I'd rather "waste" my time planting it and having it eaten than killing small mammals.

I still managed to get enough young and fresh leaves from my plants for some yummy acacia honey and mustard braised collard greens tonight. It tasted great with some rosemary sausages we had in the freezer, and, as always, it was extremely satisfying to eat our own food.