Not what I thought

I think I posted about the grand garden we were going to plant this year, full of all sorts of delectable edibles: tomato, pepper, cucumber, basil and dill?

Do you remember those beautiful photos I posted, from little seedlings to giant plants threatening to take over my kitchen?

Joe set out to work a couple of weekends ago and dug out the garden patch, a nice area by the house in full sun, and set it apart from the lawn with some nice pavers (which, guess what? Were on sale! I'm going to have to change the name of this blog to "too cheap to pay full price" or something if this keeps up). That night I set out and planted careful rows of plants.

Then it got really cold on Tuesday - I was afraid. But the plants, looking slightly less robust, were still doing ok on Wednesday morning. Then on Friday morning as Joe was walking out the door he said "you know all the plants died, right?" And I ran over to the window to survey the damage.

The entire plot? Gone. Some stems here and there, but for the most part all gone.

It appeared that my black hand of death had struck again and my poor plants (all those lovely seedlings!!) were dead.

Then yesterday as I was getting the kids ready for bed, I hear Aiko yelling "Look! The bunny is back!!"

Sure enough, I look outside to see a little furry creature nibbling on my almond bushes.

A couple of years ago we had a ton of rabbits running around our house, until our neighbor boxed them up and took them far away and released them (I still have problems with this). That year we lost many plants and our bushes suffered greatly from the nibbling, but it was kind of nice to be surrounded by all that wildlife. I was greatly disappointed when the neighbor told me what he had done (after the fact, of course) and then for a year or so we didn't see any more bunnies.

And our landscaping flourished.

With the return of our fuzzy friends it appears that it is not my black hand of death that killed off my plants but the rabbits who had a smorgasbord in my backyard. This would explain the complete disappearance of the seedlings, as opposed to seeing shriveled up dead plants in the garden.

So good news, I don't kill plants that easily. Bad news, the rabbits are back. Someone help my poor almond plants (which are apparently the tastiest thing we have, and prettiest at the moment as they are starting to bloom brilliant pink and white blooms).