Mysterious Assailant

When I checked the garden the other day I learned that it had suffered at the hands (or paws) of a mysterious assailant. There was a heavy rain the previous night (and most nights, just lately), so I suppose that the weather could have pushed over the two biggest mustard plants (and what the heck can you do with a mustard plant, anyhow?).

Something had eaten a cabbage plant and a kohlrabi. Strangest was one of the romaine lettuce plants, which had been cut into ragged 1.5 inch segments, all of which were lying on the ground. A tiny green tomato had been taken off a plant to rot on the ground, and the plastic cantaloupe tag (the kind that sticks in the dirt and comes with the seedlings) had been uprooted and moved a couple of feet away.

The nibbling I understand, but some of the other stuff seems weird. I didn't see any footprints in the soft garden soil, so I suppose I'll never learn what kind of animal likes to chop up lettuce and move plastic tags around.

At any rate, the shenanigans haven't been repeated over the last couple of days, so hopefully it won't happen again and I won't have to worry about it.

The weather has been cool and wet. From what I gather, this is good news for some of the cold weather crops, but bad news for everything else. I'm hoping the clouds go away, because the tomatoes look like they're about to burst into color-- I feel certain that if they just had a week of sunshine, they'd be ready to eat.

I started some seeds for carrots, cauliflower, lettuce, and broccoli. As far as I can tell, I started about a week late, so I'm hoping to squeak them in before the first frost hits. But the cool weather isn't going to help them sprout any sooner.