Dear Food Diary,
I've been spending a lot of time outside over the past month, getting ready to plant the garden and relandscape the front yard. I dug up a ton (or two) of landscaping rock, then got a replacement ton (or two) of black dirt and carted that around, shoveling and raking it into a slope in the front yard. I built another garden box, and a trellis, then hauled the leftover dirt into the backyard and shoveled some more.
Why the garden boxes? Because our backyard is filled with hungry and terrifying creatures. The individual creatures aren't both hungry and terrifying, BTW -- there are some that are hungry (rabbits) and some that are terrifying (mutant ninja squirrel, giant woodchuck).
The garden boxes are a defense against the rabbits, who over the past winter ate all of our front-yard shrubs, three arborvetae, two grape vines, a blueberry bush, and most of an apple tree.
I really like having rabbits in the backyard, on account of their cuteness. But after they ate everything we own, I considered evicting them from the under-shed holes. Turns out, I didn't need to. A huge woodchuck moved in a couple weeks ago and started hanging out under our shed -- the rabbits also stuck around, eating the freshly green grass and casting spiteful glances at the woodchuck.
At first I was pretty thrilled to have an honest-to-goodness groundhog living in our backyard, then Sarah mentioned that she's seen how much wood a woodchuck would chuck -- and it's lots. It had to go.
So I bought some woodchuck mace (yes, there is such a thing) and sprinked it near the entrance of the hovel holes. The following morning I decided to flood him out, usher him out the front gate, then cement up the holes.
Woodchucks are fast. And you can tell when they're pissed. After about a half hour of tunnel flooding, the thing emerged, shook itself off, looked at me, and bolted for under the deck. I chased it, not really thinking about what I'd do if I actually caught it. It was moot, anyway, 'cause it scurried under the deck lattice, laughed, and gave me the finger.
I spent the next hour building a woodchuck corral and disassembling the deck lattice. Eventually I was able to spook him out from under the deck, through the corral, out the gate, and into our neighbor's backyard. Mission accomplished.
Wow. That was a long story. I've gotta get outside and start working on the firepit.
Last thing. We went to the Twins game Monday, the home opener, and took the Northstar train.
Our view from the very last row of the rightfield-line upper deck. Not too bad.
Lookie-loos looking on from the rooftop across the way from Target Plaza (behind rightfield).
Major League Baseball's fourth-largest HD replay screen.
Sarah's view of Major League Baseball's fourth most-giant dude. It was hard to see the action (unless you count the dude as "action"), so we left our seats after the 5th and went wandering.
After a minor feast at the Townball Tavern, we ended up downstairs, hanging out next to a column, with this view.
