As summer problems go, too many vegetables is not a bad one to have. Right now my kitchen looks like the aftermath of an explosion at a farmer's market, but an excess of eggplant is far more manageable than an excess of, say, wildfire.
So I'm not complaining! But I'm grateful to my friends who accept my offerings of zucchini and tomatoes, and I'm especially grateful to my vegetarian friend who came out for lunch and helped me gobble up zucchini quiche, babaganoush, and cucumber salad.
But I refuse to be grateful to the raccoons, even if their depredations did reduce the volume of veggies needing my attention.
I remember the time years ago when our corn crop was reaching its peak and we designated a certain day for the harvest--but when I went down to the garden early that morning, I found corn stalks knocked over and ears of corn stripped and eaten. Raccoons! After all the time we'd spent planting and weeding, the raccoons left us about three ears of sweet corn.
That disaster inspired the resident green thumb to start installing a solar-powered electric fence around the corn patch. For a few years we were able to frequently relish the crunch of freshly picked sweet corn and even preserve many ears in the freezer, but then the flood that washed away our garden shed took all the electric fencing supplies down the river, and then for a few years we were dividing our time between home and Jackson so we didn't bother with a big garden.
But this was the summer to bring back sweet corn. My sweet hubby installed the new solar electric fence, taking care to put the strands of wire close enough together to deter small animals and high enough to prevent deer from jumping over the top. All summer he's carefully tended the corn patch until, finally, he brought in the first batch of fresh sweet corn to share with our son on his birthday.
That was August 3rd. For a week we've eaten sweet corn nearly every day, and if you've never eaten sweet corn on the day it's been picked, you don't know what you're missing. What a great week! But it's all over now: on August 9, my husband went to the garden early in the morning and found corn stalks knocked over and nearly every ripe ear stripped and eaten.
How did the raccoons get in there? Did the electric fence fail in the middle of the night? Or did they climb on each other's backs to reach high enough to flip the switch and turn off the power? We'll never know.
This evening we'll eat the few scrawny, immature ears the raccoons rejected, the last gasp of this year's corn patch. We'll have plenty more veggies--the peppers are just now starting to ripen and we still have kale and cabbage and cucumbers and all kinds of squash. Brussels sprouts! Watermelon! Cantaloupe! And a row of sunflowers towering over everything!
But I look at the piles of produce in my kitchen and wonder where we'll put the next batch that gets harvested. We'll eat some and put some in the freezer and keep pushing veggies on everyone we see and maybe at some point we'll be able to see the countertops again and open the fridge without releasing a cascade of eggplant. Until that time, we're learning to live in the veggie-pocalypse.
Sunflowers are just starting to bloom. 
Corn stalks torn down and stripped. 
More zuccinin--always more zucchini. 
Corn tassels reach higher than the top fence wire, but not by much
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