Yes, that’s exactly right: a groundhog made short work of the delicate buffet that was our garden. At another moment, this discovery would have devastated me. After a week of uncertainty and outright fright over Sweetpea’s pancreatitis and the whopping bills that followed, I can barely work up a Well, sheeeeeit about the groundhog’s destruction. Today, I pulled up everything I could see for sure wouldn’t survive. Some plants may survive. I left those. Some will come back if the groundhog doesn’t. Next weekend, if I can see the groundhog has gone elsewhere to dine, I will replant the bed. In the meantime, we’ve placed new barriers where we believe the interloper was interloping.

You will be pleased to hear that today we observed Sweetpea is eating again and drinking water. Force-feeding her was taking a lot out of us, Pete in particular. We visited our favorite farmers today, who nodded sadly at our garden’s tale of woe and advised us to get a shotgun and a dog. Where we live, the houses are too close together for this, so we’re thinking about a pop gun and a Schnauzer. Pete feels that he’s missing out on some sort of manly hunting and trapping thing, but I’d prefer we toss some wilted lettuce on the neighbor’s open compost heap and stage whisper, “Look, no fence. However do they keep out sandwich-seeking groundhogs?” I think that could work.

After more than a week of rain every day the garden looks lush and every plant grew tremendously. Even so: some seeds did not sprout at all; some beets have finally germinated. As I was weeding, I discovered two entire carrots had in fact sprouted so I spent the afternoon attempting to get over a grudge against them. The peas have become giant busybodies that can’t keep their fronds off their neighbors and the parsley’s showboating inspired a very delicious and refreshing salad. I cannot tell a lie: I trimmed that leaf lettuce to its stem for the second time and hope it doesn’t come back. It sounds crass to say the spinach and I have a date for six weeks after the lettuce bites the dust.

Today, I planted two window boxes with two varieties of carrots in soil liberally laced with compost and vermiculite. Vermiculite is supposed to prevent soil compaction, so I’m optimistic the carrots will do better in a dedicated container. It’s working for these wise guys, right? Ever seen such smug radishes?

Alas, the carrots I planted failed to germinate. Today, I replanted with fennel and cantaloupe and hope for the best. We’ve been gently irrigating with a weeper hose attached to one of the rain barrels. The thought occurred to us a few weeks back to add organic fertilizer to the stored water. The fertilizer we found is liquidy sticky fish glop, which I dumped into two of the rain barrels. Today, I planted new window boxes and the fennel and cantaloupe, so the smell of rotting fish was hanging in the air as water dripped down my arms. It was gross, but maybe that’s just me. I mean, it’s kind of a fine line between fish sauce and fertilizer. It’s possible that gardeners look like unripe morsels to plants.

Dum dee dum dum hangin’ around with my brain la lala laaa – wutzis, Einsteinio?

New Jerseyites Hate New Solar Panels, Brand Them “Hideous”

Ahhhhh shit.

Residents of New Jersey, a state well known for its elegant aesthetic sense, are unhappy with the solar panels installed on electrical poles in leafy residential neighborhoods by the state’s largest utility company. In suburban Bergen County, locals call the panels “ugly,” “hideous,” and an “eyesore,” in addition to protesting their installation with complaints and (possibly) vandalism, according to the New York Times.

Zis post linkies to an article. I’d give you a boost over the paywall, but I dislike muddy footprints on my manicured fingertips. Yes, I read that article. No, you don’t need to read it. It’s every stupid, venal thing about loudmouthed, entitled New Jersey douchebags you expect to find in one place and track suits, because apparently reporters from one of the most important newspapers on the planet no longer ask simple questions like, “So the poles and lines: attractive or really, really attractive?”

New Jersey has a robust alternative energy plan that aims to secure 23 percent of its electricity from renewable sources within ten years–an ambitious goal that’ll be all the more difficult to achieve if suburbanites protest the installation of solar panels on their streets. At the moment, there are talks in some towns about the efficiency of the current setup compared with how much the residents are annoyed by them-some say the panels interfere with emergency call boxes, or that spreading out the panels in this way somehow impedes efficiency (that part’s not true, according to solar experts). But it looks like New Jersey’s solar plans aren’t in any serious danger: The resistance is only in certain small pockets of the state, and the utility owns the electric poles anyway, so there’s not much those angry suburbanites can do. Maybe they’d prefer some ivy-shaped panels instead?

Zazazazaza in other words les douchebags with les flappylips will lose la soleil, but the rest of us won’t wallow. Oui oui oui!

The “Kiss And Tell” Hibiscus. Have you ever seen a smuttier flower in your entire life?