Planting, re-planting, re-re-planting

Dear garden denizens, please allow me to explain.  For gardeners and farmers, planting is a hopeful, optimistic activity.  The outcome of those small beginnings captures our imagination so the effort seems well justified.  It would seem this effort is anticipated by yourselves as well.  But this has been one of those years, when because of the weather, seeds and plants have not jumped off to a great start, instead little plants have stayed just the right snack size to be you meals.  Now that brings us to May, and the necessity of re-planting.  Re-planting is not optimistic, it's pragmatic.  Re-plant or you get nothing.  Re-plant because a short season is better than no season.  So we do it with a certain fatalistic resignation that there just isn't anything else to do.  This brings us to June and the realization that some things are going to need re-re-planting because our wildlife friendly yard is just too damned friendly.  TPP's attitude about re-re-planting is pretty ugly; it generates a deep deep resentment where you think about declaring war on your friendly wildlife.  One woodchuck has been relocated.  Four possums caught up in the sweep by accident were encouraged to move along anyways.  Four possums at once, a one trap record that some claim should be nullified because it wasn't that you caught 4, but that you caught a mother with 3 pups aboard. Whatever.  It's still a record.  Another woodchuck is being far more difficult, a wary, careful, well-fed beast with the audacity to dig beneath the garden shed!  Please understand this is a woodchuck relocation program, not a death sentence.  So dear bunny, the one that ate that row of impatiens this morning for their breakfast, things may get considerably less friendly.  The next pepper plant to disappear will not be taken with a resigned shrug.  Just remember, re-re-planting generates an ugly mood, and we're only human.  Yours, TPP.