garden update, etc.

The rabbits have still been getting in regularly, taking a bite out of the occasional tomato and demolishing my previously flourishing swiss chard.  I've been patching the holes they make with weeds; I'll pull up a sucker that's several feet tall that's growing outside my fence and then fold its centimeter thick stem in half, maybe twice and then stick it in the hole.  I'll do that a couple of times with most of the leaves and dirty roots sticking out, and eventually the opening is pretty bunny-proof; it's harder to eat through weeds than plastic fence.  I've started weaving some of the weeds where there are no holes as prevention, but I might need to go back to the cayenne pepper/oil mix I tried a bit ago (it's washed off since).

The rabbits seem to steer clear of the yellow pear tomatoes, so they've been the crowning achievement thus far.  I discovered the one-an-only cucumber growing up in an odd place, so we'll see if that survives to maturity.  Beets, carrots, and swiss chard are all developing well enough.  The lettuce has gone to seed, and there's enough of it to establish a strong strain of my own if I can save the seeds for next year; we'll see how that goes.  The tomatillos, which almost came out of nowhere, are exploding with young fruit.  N wants to grow sunflowers and corn next year and he's insisting we call it "our garden" (as opposed to "my garden"), so I'm excited that he's excited about it.  I'm going to ask the folks in charge if I can build a cold frame for starting the tomatoes, etc. next year.

Speaking of building things, I think I want to learn better carpentry skills.  For example, we bought a tall wooden shelf to act as a pantry, but it was surprisingly poor quality for the price, and I think it'd be nice to be able to build things like that without buying a box set.  Unfortunately, unless I need something it's wasteful to just make things for the heck of it and people don't like to commission something from somebody with no experience, so practicing is difficult.