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.
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.
It’s not like I wasn’t soaked already.
Awwww. We haven’t had moose in the yard in ages.
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.
Categories: Alaska
Ohmagosh! How absolutely adorable! (Not the tramping through the beds part) The baby is wonderful. I’ve only encountered moose once- flat water canoeing in Canada. I was amazed by how huge they are. How big is the baby? I have the feeling it’s only small by comparison. I hope you manage to have both a garden and moose, but realize that a garden you can have anywhere, but those of us in the lower 48 are unlikely to have moose grazing in ours.
How big is the moose baby?
At birth, moose calves are just 25-35 pounds. Not very big at all. By the end of summer, they might weigh 300 pounds. They grow fast!
So I don’t think the calf is all that big, though I have no intention of getting a closer look.
When we first saw the cow, we figured she was fairly young (teenager) because she wasn’t all that big–definitely a relative thing! Cows can breed when they’re just 1.5 – 2 years old, so she very well might be young.