Pride Goeth Before a Fall....

In my last post, I lamented about the gambles of gardening in Alaska because of our unpredictable summer climate.  I am here now to lament about another Alaska gardening gamble, a special kind of Alaska gardening pest.  And I do not mean aphids, or worms, or slugs.    I am talking about the big kind of pest that cannot be controlled by pesticides or fungal sprays.  Moose.

The other day when my hubby and I went for a bike ride, we spotted a mama moose with two young babies strolling through the neighborhood.  My guess is that this mama moose led her babies right to the salad bar in my back yard when she knew we would be in bed peacefully dreaming about sugar plums and candy canes, totally unaware of the nightmare going on outside in my garden.

Here is what my broccoli and peas looked like in my last post:

Here is what they look like now:

There is pretty much nothing left of my broccoli. Do you see the hoof print?  

The peas don't look too bad, but they were obviously part of the menu.

Here are before and after pictures of my beets:

Chomped right down the dirt. They didn't leave any been greens for me at all, which is what I was so proud of eating this past week.

My cabbage went from this:

to this:

Pretty much nothing left of the cabbage either.

It's almost funny in a way, but at the same time I feel like the little kid who is in the process of building a big tower out of dominoes and the big brother comes along and knocks it all down.

But let us be thankful, right?  I am glad that moose (apparently) don't like radishes or lettuce.  At least I still have those to look forward to, and hopefully the peas.  And when the domino tower falls down, what do we do?  Start all over, right?  

But, it will have to wait a couple weeks because we are leaving for Wisconsin tonight.  I will continue the next chapter of my garden after I get back.  In the meantime, I will be hoping that the moose doesn't come back and finish off what little she left.

Does anyone know where I can buy a potato gun???

Nothing Exciting

This is one my cats, Kiska.  Today is her birthday.  She is 9 years old.  It's hard to believe we've had her that long already.  Man, she is like ...... MY age already!...in cat years.  As you can see, she really doesn't give a hoot about her birthday.  Usually, I'm not very good at knowing the exact dates of my cats' birthdays, but I will always be sure of Kiska's birthday because she was born on my brother's birthday.  This makes it easy to remember.

Now for the dreadful report on my garden.  All together now:  "SIIGGHHH!.............NOT AGAIN!"

Here is my pathetic cucumber:

It's the only one left that is still sort of "alive".  I keep watering it, but I know it's hopeless.  Now that's what I call a "vegetable" that's just begging me to pull the plug.

(actually cucumbers are fruits, aren't they?)

okay, move along.....

My dill plant is actually growing some dill on it:

But with no cucumbers to make pickles with, I don't know what I'll do with the dill.  If I get a good crop of dill, maybe I'll buy some cucumbers from a farmer's market or something.

Here is my pathetic pumpkin:

Same as the cucumbers, I keep watering it, knowing it's hopeless.  The problem with Alaska summers is that we never know what kind of summer we're gonna get.  It's not like the Lower 48 where you can pretty much count on and expect a normal "hot" summer with temps regularly in the 70s and 80s.  Up here, it can be HOT one summer, and COLD the next.  So planting a garden is a gamble every year.

Since we are having a COLD summer this year, my cool-climate veggies are thriving quite well.  Here is are my lovely, lovely peas:

I planted a lot of them because I LOVE peas straight out of the garden!  I could snack on them like candy until they are all gone.  These will NOT make it to the dinner table, I assure you.

Here is my cabbage and lettuce:

I have already been picking from the lettuce and eating it.  The cabbage is getting pretty big, but I don't know if it's the variety that I'm unfamiliar with?  I'm expecting it to look like the cabbage we buy in the store that look like a tight ball of leaf layers that you peel off.  But these are just big leaves that are not forming into a ball.  So are these leaves THE cabbage that we're supposed to eat?  Or should I wait and keep looking for a leaf ball?

The little plants in between there are radishes:

Sorry about the blur.  I couldn't get the camera to focus (don't know what I was doing wrong - don't tell my husband - he gets mad at me when I can't master the simplest technology tasks).  The radishes look like they might be ready to pick already.  I might pick a few for my salad tonight and see.  I think I planted too many of them though, cuz I am the only one who eats radishes and I don't think they freeze well.  So I will have to scarf them all down and risk getting a stomach ache, or figure out what else to do with them.

Broccoli is supposed to be another cool-climate veggie:

Out of my six broccoli plants, only one of them does NOT look all brown and yucky like this one.  According to what I found on the internet, if broccoli leaves are brown, they are probably either over-watered or under-watered.  I expect they got over-watered from all that rain we were getting last week.  And just like the cabbage, I am waiting for something other than big leaves to form on them.

Here are my beets:

Some of them are starting to emerge out of the ground, indicating they are ready to be pulled, but the bulbs look awfully small to me.  Is it just the variety?  If I wait too long to pick them, they will get woody, so I don't know what to do. (and we are leaving for Wisconsin next week)  But I do wish I had planted more of these beets and less of radishes cuz me and Chuck, and yes, even PW! likes beets!  Also, did you know that the beet greens are VERY healthy for you?  Since I found that out, I have been clipping them off and tossing them in my salads and soups.  Next year I will have to remember to grow more beets!

My rhubarb is really taking off nicely:

I will be making some jam this weekend, I hope.  

My chives are already getting past their prime and have flowered quite a bit:

Mrs. Fuzzybee and her children were pollinating them today.  (Thank you, Mrs. Fuzzybee!)

But since there are so many flower stalks on my chives now, it is more of a pain to harvest the chives cuz I have to spend so much time picking out all the woody flower stalks.  So I think I'm pretty much done harvesting chives for this year.  I just cut off a few stems here and there if I want some fresh chives to go on something right away, like my baked potato that I"m gonna eat for supper tonight!

So that's pretty much my excitement.  Bossy is pretty excited too:

Well, not really.  I think she came outside to get away from Kiska who was gloating about her birthday.

I mean, she does look like swallowed the cake whole, doesn't she?