In article
,
Pat Kiewicz wrote:

Jack said:

The east side property line is a paradise for woodchucks -- which are
called groundhogs here -- because it is defined by a line of about 50
mulberry and black cherry trees. There's also a barbed wire fence.

Those groundhogs LOVE mulberry leaves. A young one got into
the veggie garden once under the fence (since reinforced). What
did it eat first? The leaves from the mulberry shoots growing up
amidst the daylilies that run along the fence line. (It did not live
to see the next sundown.)

http://alternet.org/healthwellness/80868/

Pollan: Nutrition 'Science' Has Hijacked Our Meals -- and Our Health

Like a lot of Americans, my understanding of nature and our relationship
to it was shaped by Emerson and Thoreau and Melville and Whitman. When I
actually started to garden, I realized all those ideas about the romance
of nature were distinctly unhelpful. Thoreau's love of wilderness and
worship of the wild really doesn't equip you when the pests come and
destroy your crops, when the woodchuck attacks your broccoli.

I got into trouble following their philosophy. I didn't have a fence,
for example. I thought a fence was too alienating from the natural
world. I got into a war with a woodchuck -- just like Bill Murray in
Caddyshack -- until I was defoliating my property and pouring gasoline
down a woodchuck burrow. I was like William Westmoreland in Vietnam,
willing to destroy the village to save it.

I realized then that the garden was a very interesting place to examine
our relationship to the natural world. Traditionally when Americans want
to think about nature, we picture the wilderness, we go camping, we go
to Yosemite. But nature is happening in our homes, in our gardens, in
our lawns, and on our plates.
--

- Billy

There are three kinds of men: The ones that learn by reading. The few who
learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and
find out for themselves.
Will Rogers

http://green-house.tv/video/the-spring-garden-tour
http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/zinn