What's The Use?

I'm a little bit whiny today. I'm frustrated and disappointed and need an outlet to vent so I'm using my blog.

I went out into the garden yesterday afternoon to harvest some produce for the dinner salad. My wife had asked that I go get some but added that she wanted me to make sure that it didn't have "that spicy stuff like last time." Apparently, there were some leaves of some varieties of lettuce that had an actual flavor that didn't set too well on her tongue. So I made sure that I only harvested some delicate greens and reds that would be mild in flavor but still tasty.

I added some white-stemmed and some red-stemmed chard to the pile thinking that it would be a tasty addition without any "spiciness." Then I went over to the onion patch for some green onions. And that's when I saw the devastation.

This spring I had planted about 400 onion sets, mostly white but many yellow and some red varieties. They have been doing phenomenally well this spring and we have enjoyed them for several weeks in salads and grilled with chicken. I have interplanted several varieties of radish, cherry belle, icicle, French breakfast and several others. I have enjoyed these as well for the past month or so. This section of the garden has been doing quite well and I have been very pleased with it.

What I saw made me both angry and heartbroken at the same time. Apparently, the dogs had been up into the onions and had rolled around in them, leaving their huge piles of crap and digging up dozens of onions as well as breaking off the tops of dozens more. I estimated that I have lost nearly a third of my entire onion crop.

I have a dog, Indiana who is big and fat and lazy and generally stays in the house. However, I have been forced to have three other dogs in my yard, my strenuous objections notwithstanding, as a result of my daughter and son-in-law staying with us for a while with their two and another daughter and son-in-law who decided they wanted a puppy but have no place to keep it. So I am surrounded by canine deposits in the back yard, weekly clean-ups just don't cut it. If I want it cleaned up more regularly, I will have to do it and I refuse to clean up for dogs I objected to having in the first place. Seems a little unfair if you ask me. I get furious when I find these deposits in the garden because they always seem to be directly aimed at a cabbage or a single lettuce plant or some such target. Would you want to eat a head of lettuce that had been the recipient of such a generous dog?

But the wanton destruction of the onions was just too much. I was almost moved to tears when I saw it. I don't understand that.

And to add insult to the injury, my wife said that she didn't like the flavor of the chard and that she wouldn't eat it, nor would she serve it for dinner. So I will be bringing in chard to my co-workers one of whom has a couple of house rabbits as pets/family members so I'm sure we could find some uses for it. I didn't grow so much, only about a dozen plants of the two varieties, but that is much more than I am going to be able to eat before it goes bad so I am willing to share.

Dog owners need to be responsible for their dogs, even if they belong to my daughters.