Take that, you nibbling little fiends!

Yesterday, probably under the heading of "It's Mother's day, let her do what she wants," my husband helped me build an enclosure for the corn part of the raised beds. It encircles the outer walls and rises 2 feet above the bed boxes, all in 1/2" hardware fabric. It has a removable top, also of hardware fabric, to allow me to get in and harvest purple bush beans (they happened to have been planted in line with the corn, and are now enclosed) and generally tend to the plants as necessary, and I think it will also form a handy support for the cornstalks as they grow.

If, after all this pain and effort - and the pain was real: my husband managed to attack the webbing of his thumb with the cordless screwdriver blade and I have several scratches from handling the hardware fabric - those little fiends manage to get into the corn, I will give up on it.

And I guess it's possible that they'll manage it - according to our neighbor, it might be raccoons - and from everything I've read, they can pick locks, just about. A lift-off top made of hardware fabric ought to be child's play to them.

But we shall see. I replanted corn seeds (again!) yesterday after we finished - I can reach, just barely - so the next week or so should be the real test.

It's supposed to snow this afternoon. A bit hard to believe at the moment, since from where I sit, the only clouds in the sky are on the other side of the mountains (and that won't cause us snow) and the air is fairly warm. It smelled fabulous outside this morning - very green. But we have one wine barrel of tomatoes where the wall-o-waters collapsed yesterday, and we didn't get them refilled. So we threw a sheet over them before leaving for work, just in case.

On other fronts, we are now within 2 weeks of my daughter's high school graduation and the associated partying with a whole boatload of extended family. For her sake, I'm very glad everyone's coming. For my sake, I hope they'll leave me a closet to hide in when the press of humanity grows too much.

We're throwing a 4+ hour party in our front yard after the ceremony itself. Barbecue (from a local restaurant) for 50. And that has meant a lot of frenzied weeding over the past couple of weeks - culminating yesterday morning with a bout of thistle-removal on my part, and Round-upping on my husband's. He had the gravel drive, which is a royal pain to do (although we will appreciate it on the day, since it parks 8 when properly organized). We're still not done, and thistles are very persistent, so I imagine I'll get to revisit my work at least one more time.

Other events for the weekend (which also happens to be Memorial day weekend) include:
- Group attendance at the Rockies game for most of the out-of-town visitors
- Some sort of caravan to the graduation itself, since many of the attendees have spent minimal time in Denver
- Sunday breakfast in the mountains

Once all that's done, I know most of them leave to catch planes - and I'm hoping to salvage part of Sunday for my annual Indianapolis 500 home improvement project. Although, to be honest, we're doing so much improvement getting ready for the party, I'm not exactly sure what will be left.