an unplanned 'craft project'

A couple days ago I noticed that one of my sand cherry plants which used to be a twig with leaves at the top was now shorter and minus the leaves.

I felt terrible assuming that I must have snagged it with the mower.  I was hoping that it would come back.

 Then today I noticed that there was another of the sand cherry plants that had been sheered off about 10 inches off the ground and a second one that had one of the branches broken at about the same height.  It wasn't the mower.  Something has been nibbling on my new plants.  The gooseberry had been similarly sheered off. 

I set about to find some way to protect my tender new plants hoping to use materials that I have one hand and came up with the idea of using chicken wire to wrap around an old tomato cage.  I have both tomato cages and chicken wire.  It worked pretty well and now I have seven chicken wire cages completed and installed.  tomorrow I will do four more in order to get the new nut trees protected as well.  I have been seeing a rabbit along the edge of the grove but have never really struggled with rabbits eating my garden before.  

As I was installing the cages around the plants I noticed that the missing parts of the plants were lying there.  That darn rabbit.  If he was going to ruin my plants he should have at least eaten the plant. 

I did rescue the branches and trimmed off the broken end and stuck them in some soil mix hoping to root them.  I am still hoping that the other ones will come back.