The Harvest

When I lived in a place without deer I had a wonderful vegetable garden; my green beans and tomatoes especially gave me great joy. Here my initial effort at bean growing only drew a horde of hoofed invaders -- legumes are deer's favorite food -- so I quickly gave up on that. I also planted blackberry and raspberry bushes, but the deer pulled them out of the ground and ate them -- the bushes, that is and I mean entirely ate them, leaving just a few shreds of dirty root. So I built a berry bush cage and the plants subsisted for a while under it, but they never amounted to much and I finally gave that up. For a while I grew tomatoes and peppers in pots on the back porch. The deer did not venture onto the porch, but something else did (raccoons? squirrels?) and I got tired of tending my tomato plants all summer only to end up with half eaten fruit. So this year all that is left of my farming ambitions is a single potted jalapeno plant. So far, nothing has molested the peppers, and here is he first one.