R.I.P.

The lives of our strawberry and red bell pepper plants were cut all to short this last weekend by our 22 lb beast of a dog. We knew she had been getting in the garden, despite our efforts to keep her out. When I was home one afternoon last week I caught her in there, and was able to see how she was getting in and out. Apparently we hadn't given her enough credit for her slim and fit figure. She was walking right through the fence we had put up. Never in a million years would I have guessed that she could through those openings. So our plan had been to go to Home Depot this weekend to get some more fencing to keep her out. But, we were too late. We hadn't gotten around to it yet, when on Sunday afternoon, I went into the backyard to check for any ripening tomatoes, when I noticed something was amiss. It finally registered that the strawberries were gone. Not just dug up, but gone, the remnants of which I later found burried in the soil. I was mad, but to be honest, the strawberries were not such a huge loss since its starting to get too hot for them now, and any strawberries we did have growing got waterlogged and ruined with the rain we had last week. But then I noticed that the red bell pepper plant was also missing. This really upset me. This plant had been the underdog of the garden. When we first planted it, we weren't sure if it was going to take. It always looked kind of sad and pitiful. But it had really taken hold and was producing so many buds and had two really good peppers growing on it. I rooted around in the soil and found my uprooted plant buried between the tomato plants. The root ball was semi in tact, so I attempted to replant it adding more soil and lots of water, but I seem to have been too late. The poor thing just isn't going to make it.

I have put up a new barrier for Copper, so I'm hoping it will finally keep her out of our garden. I want to try to plant something new now that we have open garden space, but I want to make sure she's kept out for good before we lose anything else at her paw.

So now our garden is down to two tomato plants and a green bell pepper plant. The good news is the tomato plants have been very fruitful. I have been able to pick 1-3 tomatoes daily off of them for almost the last week. Ben and I are the only ones who like them, so I guess we'll be eating a lot of tomatoes in the coming weeks!