It's been a week full of muscle aches and sore backs, as garden season has ramped up to include tilling and planting.  Our tiller is in the shop but our neighbor was kind enough to lend is his, so Mark spent 2 days tilling all of the garden plots.  We knew rain was forecast for Wednesday night going into Thursday, so Wednesday was a frenzy of planting. 

The broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage plants went out; here you can see the north garden broccoli waiting for their hot tops to be put on.  Mark also planted our first batch of sweet corn, plus beets, spinach, zucchini, and about half of our onion plants.  He'll have a number of sweet corn plantings to produce corn for the longest span of time, provided the weather looks favorably upon us.  Last year we had only two puny ears, while the year before that, we had so much sweet corn that Mark's gums were sore from eating some every day for about about 6 weeks.

This north garden was plagued by rabbits last year; even with anchoring our chicken-wire fence, the little fuzzies wormed under the wire and decimated every living thing.  We haven't seen a single rabbit since the fall, so we were hoping to have a bunny-free planting season this year.  Nope!  Mark was literally sitting with his eyes closed envisioning where to plant the broccoli, and when he opened his eyes, he was staring straight at a rabbit!  Chico the Garden Dog has gotten too slow to chase them, so he contents himself with peeing on the hot tops, and looking reproachfully at Mark when Mark gripes about the rabbits.