Hungry critters and drought

My attention has been elsewhere than the (vegetable) garden this last week, aside from watering, with attending a Farm to School conference last Thursday in the mountains, and helping coordinate a Butterfly Gardening symposium today at the Garden.

But, I shouldn't have been surprised to discover this evening that one of my chard plants had been nibbled.  But it did surprise me.

These plants (having survived over summer) were putting out new leaves, now supplied by regular watering.   But they're right out the kitchen door.   We go in and out of that door regularly.  Woody, our gardening assistant, is out there, too, even if he's not so experienced as a woodchuck deterrent.

But scorchingly hot weather and no rain must find the local woodchucks, hanging on in marginal habitat, hungry enough for food (and the water they get from leaves) to venture close to the house.

A culprit a couple of years ago (hard to fault an animal looking for moisture and food!

It might have been squirrels, too; they've been on their own this summer without the birdbaths and fallen seeds from the birdfeeders, but my guess is that a woodchuck managed to snag a few chard leaves before scampering back to the woodpile in back!