maybe that's why it's called chicken wire...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love my vegie patch. Such mystery contained within each seed, such treasure, such goodness.

So it came as something of a shock to step outside the other morning and discover this:

You cannot see it clearly in this picture, but there is a swathe of destruction running through the garden, wrought by none other than 'our' the neighbour's sheep.

I suppose it's understandable. We're in a drought, and as they've ranged over three connected backyards the sheep have eaten the grass down to nothing. It must have been nigh on torture to gaze dolefully through the chicken wire at such green lushness with nary a bight for themselves. Poor things.

But all they had to do was ask for more feed and we would have obliged - not press on the chicken wire until it unravelled and left an open path to heaven on dirt. This was our food not theirs. Our joy not theirs.

So I chased them back into the neighbour's yard like a crazed woman, feverishly hammered down the chicken wire around the whole patch and pulled out the remains of what was the most beautiful lettuce in the world, salvaged what corn I could (14 cobs destroyed) and mourned the asparagus trampled under heavy hoof (some of it might survive).

On the bright side, they don't seem to like tomatoes, so we still have 9 plants; the cucumber and pumpkin prickled their soft little mouths and they left us a plant or two of each (on which, joy of joys, the fruit is setting); and we viewed it as an opportunity to broaden our vegetable selection, replanting with fancy lettuce, capsicum, beetroot and spinach.

I suppose when it all boils down, chicken wire is designed to keep chickens in. Not sheep out.

Sigh.

After all the trouble with birds and sheep this year I'm beginning to think I should have planted zucchini after all. It seems to be calamity proof and I would feel as if I'd achieved something in the garden!