I picked the cabbage earlier than I wanted to this week. Not because it wasn't ready — because someone else decided it was ready for them.
We've got one bed that's about 3.5 feet tall, right up against the fence line. Apparently that's not nearly as intimidating as I thought, because some sweet deer just bellied up to the bar one evening and helped herself to a good meal. I came out the next morning to a very different-looking cabbage patch than the one I'd left the day before.
So I picked what was left, a little ahead of schedule, and called it good. Not the harvest day I had planned, but honestly? I can't even be mad about it. She's got to eat too, and it's not like we're hurting for cabbage — between this bed and the beans and peppers that came in at the same time, we planted plenty.
That's sort of the deal you make when you garden anywhere near a tree line, I think. You're not just growing food for yourself — you're growing food for whatever wanders through, whether that's a deer, the rabbits, or my dogs helping themselves straight off the vine. Some years that's annoying. This year, watching her make herself at home in the cabbage bed, it just felt like enough to go around.