The Rabbit
Sometimes the detour is where the story begins
This spring, the fields and open spaces around our home have been filled with the healthiest and most abundant number of rabbits I have ever seen. We have always had a few rabbits around. We knew of their existence, but in the past, their unique footprints left in the damp soil or snow revealed we were coexisting.
This year not so much. I watch the rabbits scamper, roll, wrestle, play tag, and devour my hopes of having tulips. They are so cute and fluffy in all their rabbit-ness. We have deeply enjoyed watching them, but as a gardener, there is no clearer nemesis than the rabbit.
Every child knows the story of Peter Rabbit and Mr. McGregor, a timeless tale from Beatrix Potter's beloved children's books. I remember the blue-coated rabbit I was always rooting for in the books, but goodness, was he pesky for Mr. McGregor. I sometimes felt scared for Peter, but now I understand how Mr. McGregor felt his actions were necessary to protect his passion and food. It makes sense why he felt frustrated as the cabbage he worked hard to grow for his family was devoured overnight by a few fluffy-tailed friends. In those times, heading to the store as we can now be more complex. His garden was his livelihood. Why was it Peter felt that was his best source of food in a fertile wooded setting of England? I no longer sit on Peter's team but instead join the sidelines with Mr. Mcgregor.
Early in May, I noticed our strawberries being nipped off. Thankfully this was early enough in the season to save them from demise and still get fruit, but it was the first real sign that a problem was ahead of us. I tested things out with some sacrificial plant starts. I placed them in the beds near the strawberries. Sure enough, the following morning, they were gone. The broccoli and spinach didn't stand a chance against these healthy and robust rabbits, who now have all garnered the names Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and Strawberry by the children and me. I think of their world beneath us in a twine of tunnels connecting the juniper and the white pines' root systems. A world they have created and I will never see or understand, but yet we are coexisting here together; both calling this home.
Seeing those plants taken down to the soil was when I knew this would be a new year in our garden. Every year we meet new challenges. Some are big, like rabbits. Some are small, like the mouse family that took up residency in our raspberries last year and ate at the bottoms of every bean pod that grew last summer. Some are even hard to be upset about, like the flea beetles who make things not look right, but the plants still thrive.
An experienced gardener knows that to have a garden means entering into a relationship with nature, which means we become instantly aware of how a small thing can become a big one. We learn that size is of no consequence; the smallest can decimate even our most thought-out plans. We are quickly reminded that size doesn't determine the impact on the web of an ecosystem.
There are many ways to approach these issues. You head online and begin to see a spray, trap, and removal option for nearly every pest. The thing is, though, that ultimately none of these work on a grander scale. We love to believe that eliminating the pressure of one thing checks it off the list, but the more I work in the garden, the more I realize it doesn't work that way. Just as it doesn't in life either. When we eliminate one thing, we usually create other issues. Reading the Sand County Almanac will give you a strong and beautiful picture of how an ecosystem is simply a game of dominos. Sometimes the impact is seen right away. Sometimes it takes years to see the effect unfold.
Either way, nature proves that a fine and delicate balance must be present, and the more we throw the scales, the more problems emerge.
The best part of gardening with this awareness is watching things find their natural cycle by being patient, persistent, aware, and curious. I watch year after year as the ants and aphids briefly take hold in the garden, and then the ladybugs appear and lay their larvae. Very quickly, a balance between the aphids being food for the ladybugs and the ladybugs reproducing happens. It is a beautiful thing. I am constantly trying to invite the ecosystem to find a balance. Every year this proves to win ultimately, even if I still will find myself hand-picking squash bugs and Colorado potato beetles. The diligence it takes keeps me aware, learning about these pests, and remembering that we all are in this world and deserve our space to do the work we are designed for.
It never fails that these pests come in, and I navigate through the same rhythm; surprise, frustration, anger, resolve, frustration again, curiosity, observation, and ultimately, wonder at how it all finds some natural balance. These stages aren't always quick. They take time. Some have taken years in various situations, and I expect the rabbits will be the same again.
I won't spray. I won't lure the foxes. I won't set traps. I will put up a temporary fence and spread cedar mulch. I will probably sprinkle some cinnamon and blood meal, but it may also lead to not growing veggies in our kitchen garden this year. It may mean we plant herbs and flowers instead. We may even struggle to get sunflowers, but it is humbling to garden with nature in this way. It takes patience and the ability to see the long game over the immediate. There is beauty in seeing the cycles and rhythms that unfold and how we play a part as humans, the tender and the imagination of the natural world. Understanding our place is critical in realizing how we should approach what to control and what we cannot or should not.
Truthfully, we will always have situations like rabbits in our lives. They will be those things that persist and shift our ability to achieve what we had envisioned. Learning to meet these moments with patience, awareness, and gentleness will be a challenge. It isn't the rabbit that is at fault. That's the thing I have learned. Instead, it is how I meet the challenge the rabbit brings me. I could do so many things. I could set traps or spray something that harmed them and us. Instead, I am learning I am here to tend, not control, because ultimately, nature is the only thing we can both trust and not control, no matter how we try.
I have learned instead to meet them with observation and appreciation for all they can teach me. Will I lose plants? Yes. Will I be challenged and frustrated? Of course. Will I have to rework my expectations? Most likely. However, I know the challenge they will bring will present something beautiful in ways I never would otherwise know. They will show me a world that I would never have discovered without them. This challenge isn't easy as I watch things go off the path I had planned, but this has happened many times in life. A detour is created, and the route I take instead proves even more beautiful than the one I planned. I assume the rabbit will present the same to me if I remain open to them leading me on through the unexpected.
There is a good chance our garden up by the house will struggle this year. I have come to terms with that. I will do my best to help nature find its balance and get curious about how I can find a reciprocal relationship with the rabbits as a gardener. After all, their poop is a gift to my flower beds, but maybe we can discover more here too. Their presence and comfort on the land prove we have done something incredible in the last five years. It shows me we have created a healthy ecosystem that one of the most fertile mammals desires. Considering the journey to get here, it is a sign of something genuinely magnificent. At the end of the day, I must remember this is what I have desired and hoped for as we rebuilt this land.
Maybe that is what I must take away that the rabbit is a sign from the land that it is a giver of life and intended to be a place of inspiration. I will take that even in the challenges the rabbits present this year. Once again, I am learning from nature that it isn't about what I want at all times but how I can find harmony, abundance, and balance with the challenges of being in this grand, beautiful world we call home.
We have rabbits as well and a garden. We call him Giganto and we too try to find the balance. Netting and screening has helped a bit in our strawberry raised bed. Good luck. Balance is a perfect reminder.