Only in the most jocular way, I’m starting to question the dispatches of Oakes, who reports frequently on all the visitors he entertains in the garden.
I came by yesterday in the morning — I often glance in on my walks with infant Joe and dog Emma, to admire all "my" handiwork — and ended up staying for an hour, putting out doggie water and pulling out weeds, though I was surprised by how few there were, relative to the real estate.
Even though both the playground and the school playground were packed, not only with kids but with parents (an end-of-year thing, maybe?), I had not one visitor! Either he’s cooking the books, or he’s far more attractive than I am to those in the area as a potential host and guide. Yes, that must be it.
It’s a good thing I did get over there to do some work, because family responsibilities kept me from keeping my early evening plan to meet up for the regular midweek session. When I drove by on the way home to feed Joe, I saw only Lisa toiling away, though I understand others were there for portions of the late afternoon and evening.
While I was at the garden this morning, doing surgery on the soaker hose (2X more holes now), a handsome, boxy 5-ft-5 grandmother, maybe in her early 70s, came over with her 2-year-old grandkid (or was it great-grandkid?) to admire the garden.
Today we harvested our largest radish, a Watermelon Radish, almost as big as a turnip, a handsome pink color with white, only the radish was burrowed into by the wire worm, all deformed, and in fact one of them appeared so as to have his photograph taken!
We learned that the wire worm is particularly prevelant when turf is converted to garden. We hope it will not also burrow into our carrots and beets and potatoes! Continued cultivation in the fall is one solution so that the worms will be noticed by their predators, such as, an article suggests, your chickens!
