I see you!

Yup, I see you, for sure.

You're my first cucumber of the 2015 gardening season, and I can practically taste you already. You're beautiful and precious and I can't wait to consume you.

This delightful little morsel will join my tossed salad ingredients in a day or two.

And if I'm feeling especially generous, I'll even put some slices of it into Ken's salad, too.

Unfortunately, I spotted something else while taking a look at Ken's potato patch this morning.

Dreaded deer tracks. We had heavy downpours yesterday, so the unplanted portion of Ken's garden was a tad soupy. That made it just right for deer tracks to linger.

The deer sashayed into Ken's garden patch from the woods, meandered over to his potato plants and took a sniff, then wandered out of the garden.

Today I frantically applied my special, homemade deer deterrent to both Ken's potato patch and my larger garden:

2 eggs
2-3 cups water
2/3 cup dry milk powder (I refuse to use fresh milk on deer deterrent)

A little vegetable oil.

The above I whirr in the blender until they're thoroughly emulsified. Then I add a tablespoon of liquid  dish soap. (The first time I made this concoction a few years ago, I added the soap to the blender. That was stupid! It took me considerable time to sop up the soap bubbles from my kitchen counter.)

I put this mixture into a spray bottle, let it sit at room temperature for a day or two so it can acquire a really disgusting odor, and spray it in my garden.

So far, so good. Fingers crossed. Knock on wood.

But that cucumber! Isn't it a beauty?