I have to be careful with wildlife because my property backs up to a canyon and rats can be a serious problem. I have to fence off my vegetables, last year the bunnies got to my cucumber leaves and the rats got into my tomatoes.

The blueberries get covered because I have one knucklehead bird that loves to fuck with me. This lady digs up the mulch just after it’s been cleaned and spreads it all over the flagstone just so she can eat bugs. She started going after the blueberries and I had to cover it because nothing was getting ripe enough for me to eat. She did bring her baby around and I got to watch it bathe in a puddle of water though, so that was cute.

The pillbugs in my garden bed are very lucky. I feed them plant scraps so they won’t eat my living plants. They already destroyed 5 luffas and 4 hot pepper plants. I cut down my dragon tail radish plant and froze most of the radishes to feed to the pillbugs. They also like when I deadhead the marigolds, they latch on and I find so many babies in the flowers. Then I throw them over the fence into the canyon like a pillbug bomb lol

I have a pact with the spiders and mantises in my yard though. They get free range all over and can eat any and every bug they find. Last year, I had a green lynx spider in my cucumber plant who was my best friend for the summer. She was a tiny thing missing 2 legs and ate so many aphids and bees that she turned into a big hulking mama. I tracked her for 9 months and watched her babies hatch and roam away to the canyon.

I have more agreements with the insects and spiders in my garden.