h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is such an amazing time of year! I make up excuses for going out to my garden. Every day more beans and beets are up, the sunflowers keep getting taller, the wild roses and tea roses are forming buds or even starting to bloom.

The wildflowers that I'm growing from seed keep getting bigger.

There's also the local rabbit, though. A day wouldn't be complete if I didn't have to chase it away, watching its white cotton tail disappearing as it ducks under the fence into the next lot. It stripped one of my bushes of its leaves. Then I realized that my neighbor's mulberry bush has a lowhanging branch that is also stripped of leaves. The bunny thought my bush was a mulberry. Armed with all the useless knowledge I could find on the Internet, I mixed chili powder with garlic powder and sprinkled it on my most vulnerable plants, hoping it would keep the rabbit away. My yard has an interesting smell now.

There is also deer and rabbit repellent which you can spray. Organic, safe, effective, and worth the price.

I have the repellent on hand, and I've tried it. I can't seem to get the spray mechanism to work reliably.

We had one container like that - we took it back and fussed, and they replaced it at the hardware store.

I've been fishing caterpillars out of my hair today. Looks like the gypsy moths are in town.

I hate those things.

We, on the other hand, have baby chipmunks.

The rain we're getting should rev up the fungus that kills Gypsy Moth caterpillars.

Yay, rain!

On the other hand, the rain washes away the stuff I put on my plants to repel the rabbit.

There's that, too.

I don't know if it works, but some people around here say if you shave some Irish Spring soap and leave it lying around, they'll give it all a miss.

Somehow, wildlife don't appreciate Irish Spring any more than the Irish Anti-Defamation League.

A homemade rabbit repellent consists of 2 tablespoons of garlic powder, mixed with a tablespoon of chili powder, ten ounces of water, and a squirt of dishwashing detergent. Let it stand for a day, then squirt it on the leaves of the plants you want to protect.

If yu want a deterrent, put up a poster of a 'Rabbit Salad' recipe.

When I was three, I sprinkled soap powder on my grandmother's flowers. Allegedly, I thought she was washing them, and wished to assist...

Did she think you were a dis-sud-dent?

It was an early sign of aberrant mentation...

The first of many, eh?

For sure.

My asters and sunflowers are leaning. I hope they'll straighten up eventually.

How big are your sunflowers? Ours are barely up yet.

These are perennial sunflowers. They starting coming up in mid-April. Some of them are two feet high now. Even the sunchokes are that tall, and I planted them in containers in mid-April.