The Cost of Doing Business

Cabbage – regarded in modern kitchens as humble – has reached the requisite 71-ish days (the seed packet says that’s how long) in my garden and is ready to harvest. On going out do that – exciting! This is my first time growing cabbage! – I found I was not the first to the patch.

I’ve known about the rabbit for weeks. Whether I’m too lazy, don’t have the time, or just plain old don’t feel the imperative to somehow keep him out I can’t say – but he ate the tops off of my carrots, shared in the tomato harvest, and there he was when I arrived in the cabbage patch.

He’s not the only one:

I don’t use any insecticide, I didn’t bury my fence into the ground, and the truth is I don’t mind sharing (much). I figure it’s the cost of doing business and sharing the land with the creatures that live here and give this place it’s character, who are part of the ecosystem; it’s all right with me.

I wish he hadn’t eaten all of the tops of the carrots, though.

Back to the cabbage: the rabbit doesn’t seem to have eaten much. It looks like there were some caterpillars having their way with it – I’d noticed them chewing holes in the outer leaves over the weeks the plants grew but I decided to keep taking care of the plants and watch what happens. So I picked the cabbage yesterday:

and cut it open to see what the story was:

Beautiful. Sweet, firm, cabbage once I peeled off the outside worm eaten leaves.

I’m not psyched about losing the decorative pumpkin photographed at top to whatever ate it – a woodchuck? But I am harvesting others that were left untouched, which feels like a kind of fair sharing deal.

So there it is – bugs, critters, and all.