Jungle love

My garden has exploded. In a good way. It truly is a jungle. I planted in the spirit of "Square Foot Gardening" even though I hadn't bothered to read the book - I figured it meant just pack it in. And it's worked so far! One of the benefits of this gardening method is lack of weeds - there's simply no room for them. On the other hand, the swiss chard seeds I planted just before I put in the rest of the starts hasn't had a chance to grow either. Oh well, our Farmer's Market will fill in the veggie gaps we have.

Another casualty was the broccoli - each of my 6 plants had a small head when I noticed caterpillar worms on them. I struggled mightily with those buggers last year and I'm not fighting that battle this year - not with the rest of my garden flourishing and space being at such a premium. So the other night we had a delicious pasta primavera with zucchini, basil and the first/last broccoli from the garden.

Just for reference, this is the garden May 20, just after I planted it:

In addition to being being a fertile ground for plants, it seems I've created a haven for woodland animal babies. Two weeks ago I went out to check on it and startled a fawn sleeping in the grass in the U. I had to open up one side of my garden fence to let it out and then I was worried about how it was going to get through our outer fence to find it's mother. Since I haven't seen it since I assume it did eventually find her. 

Today when I was visiting my garden a bunny exploded from one side, so I went to look at the fence and, low and behold, there were 4 baby bunnies sticking their noses out of their nest next to the wooden raised beds (but inside the wire fence). Sigh. I'm not going to do anything cruel, but I am worried about how much of the veggies will make it to my family. Strangely enough, even with a totally ineffective fence, I don't see any signs of damage to any of the plants. We'll see how long that lasts with a hungry momma bunny and Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter to feed. (Or maybe it's Thumper and his family, since Bambi was already there.)

This is a picture of the nest in the grass. Note the downy grey fur layer. They were out of the hole when I first came upon them, and then must have ducked back in by the time I came back with Natalie and the camera. 

And now, some cute pictures of the kids:

Sam loves feeding the chickens. "Chickie" is one of his words now. He'll bring the metal dish to the nearest adult, then toddle to the door where we keep the food, point and yell to get in and get the food. The chickens seem to like him quite a bit too. Natalie's robot family.