Fishers’ Loft Inn
The Kitchen Gardens
September 1st, 2008
By the end of August our garden is at its peak. We enjoyed a bumper crop of strawberries this summer, plump and sweet and every bit as popular with the crows as they were with the guests. Those brash crows were swooping in and carrying berries off whole, but we won that battle when Colette's husband Derek and her daughters, Olivia and Jill, built a scarecrow to stand guard. During the day he keeps the crows away. At night, a solar lamp under his hat casts a glow that terrifies the rest of us.
As well as strawberries, we've been eating beautiful young salad greens since the middle of July. Susan, our principle gardener (and the Loft's massage therapist) is masterful at harvesting without making the garden look depleted - no mean feat, with 40 for dinner many nights.
The new potatoes in Dave's & Chris' lower garden are plentiful and delicious. Delicate carrots, zucchini, patty pan squash, snow peas, Swiss chard, turnips also appear regularly on the dinner menu. Cucumbers are starting to grow in our small greenhouse, where we also have basil and tomatoes.
We keep our fingers crossed that the garden won't be attacked by either moose or rabbits. They could make short work of it, and we're not sure why they don't. They are certainly around - Collette saw a bull moose only feet from the garden recently as she headed home at 11 p.m. Could the presence of our dog Heike and two cats, Grace and Smokey, be enough to discourage them? Or could it be that a solar lamp turns a scarecrow into a scaremoose?
Next year we hope to have fewer worries and even more bounty -- watch for pictures of our heated greenhouse going up this Fall.
