It is almost time to start planting and I am not quite ready. Last year around this time I was searching for a disc so I could start my first garden in over forty years. I was pretty proud of that garden too. Right up until the wildlife declared war on it. Like the French underground, these critters had an elaborate network that kept my garden under surveillance, waiting until my car crossed the creek and exited up the driveway to attack. Or until our lights went out at night. I should have taken pictures. The cabbage that I had started from seed were reduced to nubs. My tomatoes suffered the same fate. Those animals broke my corn stalks off for no reason. Why would they do that, except to show me who’s in charge of that territory I was now calling garden? Nothing survived. I shot one of the groundhogs. They retaliated by mowing down my pepper plants and destroying my watermelons. Cantaloupes, not one survived.

I’m no quitter. Bad news is, I don’t think they are either. So I have a plan. Raised garden. You’ve seen them. Maybe you even have one. Mine looks very similar to Fort Knox. I may actually have more money in that damn garden than they have too, by the time it is finished. While I have ruled out a moat, I am pretty sure an electric fence will be the finishing touch. Peat moss, topsoil and all the work involved, including the lumber, leaves me wondering how long an Amish family would have fed me if I would have just given them the money I have spent on something that can be tunneled under. Donald, I hope you aren’t laying awake at night like I am, asking that same question. But like I said, I am no quitter.

Last year I underestimated the critter population and I now am ready to admit that mistake to the world, but no more. This year I will have the upper hand.

The war has begun.