Who nuked the cukes?

Nice cukes, right?

"How come every pot doesn't have a nice cuke?" some of you may be asking.

I asked that same question yesterday morning while watering the new plants in my greenhouse.

The day before, I had once again admired my two dozen healthy plants.

Yesterday more than a third had disappeared from the tray which was sitting on a shelf about eight inches off the ground.

The lovely leftovers are actually a deeper green from what you see in the picture.

I used the "saturation" tool in Picasa to accentuate the empty pots.

If you look closely you'll see a few of the little green nubbins on level with the dirt in each empty container.

Chomped off. Neat, tidy, precise job, I must admit.

When you're stealing, it's important not to leave clues.

In my greenhouse, no less! I could not believe it.

Something had come in the night and something had stolen my babies, straight from their beds.

That something had walked right past a trayful of showy lettuce, sitting right on the ground.

I had been bringing the lettuce out in the day time to sit in the sun.

I had been taking it back to the greenhouse so the deer would not eat it at night.

They didn't, nor did the mole or whatever the heck the critter was that beheaded my cukes.

Yes, I've found little piles of dirt on the ground underneath the shelves of my greenhouse.

And, yes, if I bend down enough I can make out some holes.

I can also see holes along the outsides of my greenhouse, but until yesterday, I was going blissfully along with my early spring gardening show, figuring my plants were safe and sound in the greenhouse. A heater kept them warm during cool nights, and I've watered them faithfully during these past few nice days.

What more could one do?

Well, it's apparent there's something more I must do---either nuke those moles in their holes or put down some type of industrial-strength ground cover.

Even if I do that, a mystery still remains.

I'm used to moles/gophers---whatever you want to call them---eating the bottoms off my carrots. They did that without fail in one section of my garden last year.

I'm not familiar, however, with moles who climb up on to shelves to steal.

Until yesterday morning's discovery, I thought moles did their work undercover or more specifically underground.

Silly me!

Guess we learn something every day in this life of ours, and when you live on a farm, the learning curve is virtually never-ending.

One of my friends told me yesterday that she didn't want to hear about my garden beds or my labors of digging in the dirt. She would just go to the farmer's market to get her food.

I told her that she really didn't have a clue what kind of energy brings that broccoli or those bags of lettuce or those lovely cukes to the market.

Only the farmer knows for sure, I added.

And, this amateur gardener/farmer is getting too much knowledge about the "could-go-wrongs" of growing veggies for market, or growing anything for that matter.

Yesterday, I hauled dirt and filled a three by three-foot, six-inch deep hole in the middle of the hayfield, dug over time and during idle hours by my dear Lily last fall.

I reseeded the plot and hope that she doesn't destroy my efforts again this fall.

I also planted a whole bunch more cucumber seed and brought the tray into the house, where I'm hoping it will be safe in the garden window.

I'll take the six tulip bulbs from the Easter bouquet---yanked from the ground and separated after one week's stay---to a place inside my garden fence and replant in hopes that the deer can't find them again.

The other day, moments after discovering that my broccoli actually came up in its outside bed, a dog ran through the baby plants.

I put marigolds in the new lawn planters in hopes that the mythology of marigolds detracting deer will work.

It's an uphill battle succeeding with a garden and even a hayfield out here in Selle, and with population boom of deer and moles, I'm afraid this year's season is going to be a real challenge.

Who let those damn moles out anyway?