“I’m a terrible corn grower. I just can’t raise corn. Something always happens.”
Jim has a long, sad history with corn disasters. When he built his raised beds after he retired, he looked forward to planting corn and roasting sweet, juicy ears on the grill with a little olive oil and salt.
The deer got the first crop, leaving nothing for us to enjoy. Jim decided to enclose the beds in a high fence. With the help of a friend, he built a beautiful compound with an entry at either end.
Next came the crows, which ate every developing kernel and sampled the tomatoes and blackberries, too. That summer, we discovered black netting, and Jim ordered shiny foil pinwheels that we stapled to the tops of the fence posts. I don’t know if the pinwheels scared the crows away, but they were colorful and gave the garden a carnival ambiance.
Somewhere along the way, rabbits discovered that they could wiggle through the wire fencing and jump into the beds to nibble on the corn shoots, so Jim added rabbit ...