The bitter battle between the gardener and the iguanas

Gardening is one of the few activities we look forward to every day during the lock down on my rock. We tend the plants and we water them, as it's now the dry season and we haven't had any significant rainfall for over three weeks.

Shopping has been a challenge as the authorities try different ways to give everyone the opportunity to shop for essentials while maintaining physical distancing. So far, it hasn't worked that well. There have been too few days, too many people, too few stores open and some shortages. 

Faced with shopping challenges we've found the edibles in our garden are all the more precious. Precious to us but equally precious to the three iguanas who have decided that our garden is the best in the neighbourhood and come regularly to share the harvest. Or more accurately put, to devastate the harvest. 

The iguanas have their preferences like bok choy, kale, young bean plants, my gorgeous giant lilac hibiscus and okra. So, the battle lines have been drawn. Hubby, inventive as ever, comes up with different deterrents. He built a cage of thorns around the okra. Pretty impressive. Not to the iguana, however, who somehow managed to stick their noses far enough into the thorn cage to eat most of the young leaves. 

Next, the beans. Hubby built strong wire mesh fences around the plants. Brilliant we thought. However the iguanas figured out that after a while, beans, which climb, will  grow higher than the wire mesh. Gone are the tops of the bean plants!

Not one to give up easily, Hubby then built a sort of cage made up from the lime tree branches he trimmed off the tree. The thorns on these branches are pretty formidable. He put these around the okra, bok choy and eggplant. This seems to be working now but don't quite know what to do when the plants outgrow the cage.

Someone told us iguanas hate onions. OK, so we planted seedlings and surrounded them with green onion plants. Useless. The iguanas trampled down the onions and munched down on the young bok choy. We discovered that blowing a shrill whistle startles the iguanas and sends them scurrying away. Hah! This worked once, but seeing that no harm came to them, now they just look up when they hear the whistle and continue on their way.

If I see one, I quickly run down and fling a towel at it. That works but isn't practical, as it would require me to stay in the garden all day! Desperate people have suggested we put poison out around the young plants. This we will not do. Much as the beasts are frustrating us, we cannot bear to kill such magnificent creatures.

So, we battle on. Soon the rains will come, the vegetation will spring back behind our house and the iguanas will have lots of food to choose from. The hibiscus recovered last year, the beans are pretty hardy and the okra is a fighter, so there's hope. When all else fails, we can always re-plant.