It started raining last week and it hasn’t stopped. The Matanuska River is now the MUDanuska. The blueberries were parched, so we welcomed the rain–at first. But with no signs of it stopping, it’s kind of put a hitch in our garden gitalong. So I decided to move forward–in the mud. We can’t create the garden where we ultimately want it, so we made a couple of temporary beds with old spare siding, and that’s the way it will be this year.

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The dark stuff is actual soil that we had brought in. The rest is a silty clay that gets soupier and soupier as you tromp around in it. It’s like quicksand.

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It’s not like I wasn’t soaked already.

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Awwww. We haven’t had moose in the yard in ages.

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But get out of the garden!

Seriously. Hours after transplanting, the moose show up, and we haven’t seen any for months! Yeah, a real garden needs a fence, but this isn’t the real garden! I just can’t wait for the real garden. I want to grow lettuce NOW.

They stayed out of the beds while we watched, then disappeared up the hill. Today, however, there are baby moose tracks through one bed, the leaves of one red chard plant are munched, and one green chard plant was uprooted and munched. It stepped right on one snow pea plant.

Sigh. We’ll fashion a fence of sorts early next week, if there’s anything left to protect, but it won’t be anything capable of stopping a determined moose. If anything can. I’ll just hope the moose aren’t that interested.

If I can’t have a garden, I will enjoy having moose instead. Although I’d rather have both.