We starteded gardening the beary first spring after we were born. Before we started, the neighborhood squirrels have enjoyed eating our maters (Grandma note: tomatoes.) Worse yet, they ate them before they turned red, always left the skin and the rest of the tomato in our neighbor's yards, and it wasn't only one a day – sometimes there were four or five maters scattered around! We almost gave up growing maters, two years ago, when they ate our first five of the year!

We thunk and thunk and thunk all winter, and finally thunkeded a good way to stop them! Last year, we draped bird netting for fruit trees over our maters. The squirrels never ate a single one, but the plants grew through the netting, making it hard to get to the maters.

Grandpa thought of putting up framing around the tomatoes this year, but we knew there wasn't enough room to work. Grandma bought pretend bamboo, which are really metal inside, looks like bamboo poles on the outside, and comes with clips to hold pieces together. Our daddies putteded it together, hung the netting over it, soweded the pieces together, and put all our maters inside. If we're really lucky, Grandma might keep the vines trimmed, so they won't peak through.

Our parents are celebrating it by using it as a hammock together.

It's hard to see the netting with the chainlink fence behind it, so this might help you see it better.

They're soaking up the sun together on the new hammock. The crooked lines below their feet are pipecleaners used to stitch two sections together. (Our mommies want it known that they didn't sow it! It might not be perty, but it works.) This also shows the pretend bamboo. Grandma calls it something else, but we don't know how "bad guy" can mean "pretend." (Grandma note: "Faux.")

Well, so far we haven't had any maters disappear. We do see fresh holes dug in any container with more then one square inch of dirt showing, and the mean squirrels did eat our fig tree and one of our Brussel Sprouts. (It was dramatic. We're still in shock! Hotdogs would make us feel better though! Oh, goodie! Our daddies heard us and are going to grill us some hotdogs!) With that, whenever possible, someone sits out back protecting our garden from squirrels. We won't kill them, but we do have a good weapon to beat them.

Our daddies are holding their squirrel guns, prepared for action.

Despite all these ways of fighting squirrels, sometimes they still sneakeded into our garden.

Today was a day we wish we had seen! Grandpa was out in the garden relaxing after watering some of it. As he sat there quietly, a squirrel sneakeded, not only into the garden, he slipped under the netting, and sat on a table eating something. (Grandpa didn't see what he was eating, but did tell us that the squirrel didn't pick it off of our plants.) Well, Grandpa had the hose next to him, and it was on. He set it to "jet" (the hardest spray), aimed, and fired! He got the squirrel, the squirrel bolted, but headed up. Up is where all the netting is tied together strongly! He couldn't get out! He bounced from one side to the other, up and down, trying every which way (but under) to get out! The entire time, Grandpa was squirting him with the water hard, constantly, and with no mercy. He says it looked like the squirrel was a pinball in play. (Grandma tells us pinballs were games played before computer games.) The squirrel did find one of those little seams at the top and wiggled out, but probably because he was soaked! (Grandpa says the squirrel looked more like what he is, "a tree rat." We won't say that though, a'cuz some of our friends are squirrels and rats! They will never hear this story!) We're hoping that will teach him not to return to our garden. Grandma calls that "op…op…op-tee-missus!" She's not saying anything bad though, a'cuz she says she's hoping the same thing!