Another Garden Update

Hey, get this. A few months ago I put this tiny seed in some dirt, right? And I watered it and let it sit on the windowsill above my sink for a while, and then I thought, ‘Hey, it’s warmer outside now; I will stick this little plant into the ground.’ It got bigger and had some flowers, and you’ll never guess what happened next.

It made a tomato. Get out of town! From an itty bitty seed? I think I might be on to something here.
Honestly, I don’t know how you people with actual human babies ever manage to get anything done. How is your time not entirely filled with pointing and saying, ‘Look! Look what I did! Me!’ But then, I guess tomato plants never keep you up all night or throw tantrums in stores. You never have to whistle, look the other way, and pretend you’ve never met your tomato plant. Everything has its ups and downs.
But, hey! That seed thing works with flowers too:

Cute, no? Only two have opened so far, along with a few crappy white poppies. They’re flimsy and not attractive. The bachelor buttons are nice, though.
Back to tomatoes — they all seem pretty happy at the moment. Mr Stripy is the biggest right now, although the Cherokee Purple has roughly the same number of fruit. My Striped Cavern, a late purchase which is planted in the side yard, has blossoms, as does my second Brandywine, which is growing in a pot.
Also in a pot is my Bush Pickle plant, now sporting the littlest cucumbers:

I think I bought the Bush Pickle at the same time as the Striped Cavern tomato, because the veggies were on sale, and I’ve been wanting to try making refrigerator pickles. I’ve been really surprised at how it’s taken off; I want to make a little trellis out of chicken wire for it to climb, so it doesn’t take over the back path.
Speaking of chicken wire, I had some in the garage (which I WAS planning on using for the cucumber plant) that I used to make cages for the eggplant and two of the pepper plants. When I did my morning inspection of the garden yesterday, I noticed that a squirrel had torn leaves off a broccoli plant, but it wasn’t until the evening that I realized I was missing an eggplant fruit and two or three poblano peppers (both plants still have many more blossoms, but that was the total of their actual fruit at the time).
Now I keep noticing nibbled zucchini blossoms and missing pea shoots. I’m going to make a garlic/cayenne spray, but maybe I should also put out some corn cobs to distract them. . . or would that just invite more of ‘em to the buffet? As I told S, if they touch my tomatoes, they’re taking their life in their little furry hands.