Oh, Elsa

Inspirational song: Dammit, Janet (Rocky Horror Picture Show)

Way back in Charleston, at the Original Smith Park, I made a huge, huge mistake. I was cooking with kale, and I fed the stems to the dogs. Bump was not super enthused, but he ate some. Puppy Murray thought they were pretty cool, but within a few hours we learned how un-fun it was to have a paraplegic dog with diarrhea. Elsa thought the kale was the most awesome-est ever. At least that's how it appears in hindsight.

I was thrilled when there was a pre-existing garden when I got this house five years ago. It had two varieties of raspberries, some small tomato plants that were probably volunteers from the year before, and kale. Big, glorious kale plants. I promised myself the first big meal I would make would be boerenkool stamppot, a stew made with potatoes, kale, and kielbasa. It didn't cross my mind that I wasn't the only one excited about that plant growing at the new house.

We moved the garden across the yard after the first summer, and it struggled to survive on the north side. I had a little kale growing weakly in one corner for a while, but it died out and didn't come back this year. I bought some to go in the newly-returned south garden, but it wasn't yet time to put plants in the ground. I left them outside while I waited. And then the tops to them disappeared. We yelled at Elsa, but there was nothing to be gained from that. There was a little left, and when the Mr cleared off the compost bin from the raised garden bed he had built last year, he put the kale stubs in the ground, just in case. He filled the rest in with the bok choy we got at Costco, and the things I had been rooting in the kitchen,  like onions and potatoes. 

I heard a commotion this morning. Then I got a text from a very angry man in my back yard. Elsa had climbed over the barriers intended to keep her out of the garden, and dug up the stumps of kale, and ate all but a nub of bok choy. I don't know where to go with this. Last year, the pickets weren't on the fence, and she ate every tomato that tried to grow on four plants. Now she is terrorizing my greens. Is it bad that I'm starting to fantasize about electric fencing? Or should I assume not even that would keep this eating machine away from her veggies?