Summertime?

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russel Baker

I don't want to sound as though I'm complaining...but...

It was ninety degrees here yesterday.

NINETY.

In April.

In New Hampshire.

I haven't even tilled my veggie garden yet -- had planned to do that this weekend so I could put out the cold weather crops like carrots and peas.

But it was too hot to put out my cold weather crops. Anyone else find that ironic?

I'm not too worried, though, because by mid-week, the temps are dropping thirty degrees again. After this weather, 65 degrees is going to be frigid. I worry when this kind of thing happens, because it encourages the more delicate plants to start growing and then -- WHAMMO! -- it freezes again and kills them.

Not that it matters, really, since the Cunning Voles of Doom are doing a bang-up job killing everything anyway.

Yesterday, I was looking out my front window at my pretty grape hyacinths that are just beginning to bloom when a vole ran across my "vole repellent" and started to nibble on the greens. A short time later, DH was putting out ant traps and saw a vole having a snack on my peonies. I wondered why they weren't coming up as well as they usually do.

I've been doing massive amounts of research on vole control, and the two really effective poisons for them are illegal in New Hampshire. My options? Snap-traps (ugh) or anti-coagulant poison (ugh, again). The snap traps I don't like for two reasons: I don't want to have to handle their little corpses AND they're random -- so I could catch squirrels, chipmunks and heavens knows what else. And the anti-coagulant poison is torture, plain and simple.

So... what do I do? I'm at my wits end. One of my true joys in life is gardening, and it's become such a stressful situation, I'm not sure I shouldn't just dig everything up and plant grass.

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Judy and I are in the midst of a writing challenge: 7500 words in two days. In fact, I still have 6000 words to write by tomorrow morning, so I will bid you adieu. Have a great Sunday!

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