i want to wish all the dads in my life a very happy father's day. we had a fantastic day except for the...devastation.

here is another picture from the series of photos i took in the garden JUST LAST NIGHT (by the way, that's mud on adam's rear in the previous post...not chicken poop. there seemed to have been a bit of confusion amongst some of my readers - ha!). this is a photo of the row of lettuce and broccoli (the broccoli is toward the back...all you can see is big, beautiful leafy greens). they were my favorite plants in the garden: a blue-ish green leaf; thick stalks and growing up as well as out.
 

this photo is 10 minutes old. taken just 25 hours after the photo above. the lettuce in the front is gone...the lettuce in the middle is mowed, and the broccoli? sticks. broken sticks. the gorgeous leaves now being digested in the belly or bellies of the three groundhogs that live in our yard.



lets take a closer look at the lack of broccoli in our garden:



they've also munched on our beans and cucumbers.

i know you are all shaking your heads as you read this thinking, "why haven't you gotten that fence we ALL told you to put up as soon as humanly possible?" why didn't we listen to all your advice? because...because...we have no excuse. we're still researching the most effective and cost-efficient (that's my new phrase) fence. and our garden is being eaten from under our noses by the burly little hogs that i have no sympathy for anymore.

another reason we haven't put up a fence yet is because the previous owner, who still lives near us, swears up and down she never needed a fence. they grew tomatoes and other veggies and never had a fence. we believed her. now we're not so sure.

i'll leave you with an image from happier times earlier today. what a great dad kenny is: he hardly got a chance to use his father's day present (a 30-year anniversary edition shakespeare ugly stick, for those readers who are also fishers) today since the two older boys seemed to want to do all the fishing. after the fishing, we ate our grilled burgers and then swam in the lake. all three boys are fishes. we couldn't get them out of the water.



HAPPY FATHER'S DAY, DADS!