On Distraction and Destruction...in the Garden

In case this needs clearing up for some reason, gardening is my avocation...probably in both senses of the word.

From Word.A.Day: avocation

PRONUNCIATION: av-uh-KAY-shuhn)

MEANING: noun 1. One's regular job or occupation.
2. An activity taken up besides the regular work; a hobby.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin avocare (to call away), from a- (off, away) + vocare (to call), from vox (voice). Earliest documented use: before 1617.

NOTES: Originally the word vocation was used in a religious sense, as a divine calling. If a vocation was a calling, literally speaking, an avocation was a calling away, a distraction, which could be a hobby or a diversion. Sometimes the business that calls away can be of greater importance.Over time the two opposite senses of the word avocation became muddled and now it can connote either sense depending on the context. [Emphasis mine]

A distraction that has become so important to my life that it has become my "calling." An occupation, as in "occupying" my time and attention. Yep, that's gardening! I ask you, what else can be so life-affirming, physically challenging, mentally stimulating (honest, I'm always researching new ideas, etc), rewarding...and put good food on the table, too?!

I also ask you what can be so life-affirming and so heart-breaking at the same time? I'm experiencing more than my share of the latter emotion at the moment.

Let's let the pictures do the talking, shall we?

Here's a shot of one of the 8 Sugar Baby watermelons I snapped last week. So proud I was!



Ah, who said "pride goeth before the fall"? Turns out the biblical verse is nearer the truth than I imagined:

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18, King James Version (KJV)

Destruction, indeed. So what did THAT, you ask? Best guess, we have one or more raccoons visiting the garden. He/she/they got another of the ripening watermelons in the Row Garden and three ears of corn from the Block Garden.

I have blamed the squirrels for this damage to the almost ripe tomatoes, done a few days ago. Maybe I rushed to judgment? See what you think:



Learned my lesson...am now picking all tomatoes before they get too tasty-looking. Means I can't go out to the garden and get a warm, ripe juicy tomato for my BLT, but that's the price we pay, eh?

Now, back to the watermelons...and the raccoons. Raccoons are nocturnal, so they are active in the garden when the dogs...our first line of defense against the critters...are least likely to be on patrol. Sigh. What to do? My research shows the top recommendation for protecting your melon patch is to "surround it with an electric fence, turning it on every night."  The Way Back Garden is fenced around the perimeter, but the individual gardens are not...and I doubt we will be electrifying the area any time soon.

Another less-concentration-camp-like suggestion is to cover your crop with netting or row covers, although my experience with raccoons and bird seed (they terrorize some of our feeders) is that they are extremely smart...and can defeat most brilliant ideas to contain what they want to eat.

An outside of the box suggestion was to put a radio in the garden and leave it turned to an all-night talk station. I knew there was a good reason for those programs!

Broken-hearted...but not beaten. As McArthur famously said, "I shall return!"

A distraction indeed.

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[On a happier, more life-affirming note...check out our family blog post on our trip to the Lakeview Daylily Farm here: http://adsit2.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-2013-great-hemerocallis-hunt.html