Today was going to be the day I wrote about how rosy everything in the garden was.
About how well the fig tree was doing now that it was in the ground.
About how many strawberries I will be getting this year.
About the peas and carrots and beets and tomatoes.
And then I went down to the garden this morning to see if there was a rose in bloom for my bud vase.
And there was. One. All the other about-to-bloom roses were gone.
Someone had enjoyed a multi course feast the previous night. I suspect this clown.
Apparently he doesn’t know his place – here, at the back of the house.
See, here’s the thing. I don’t have the world’s best fence, but thanks to the location, it’s almost impossible for a deer to take a running leap at it. Once upon the time there was an actual gate, but in my absence Mike left it open and it rotted. So, what has laughingly been passing as a “gate” for the past four years is some chicken wire stretched across the end of the ever-so-good-for-running-jumps path to the garden. I know Antler Boy must have jumped over it, because the chicken wire was still in place this morning. Up until now I’ve been lucky.
So, how did he do? Well, there’s the chomped roses
and the remaining half of the fig tree, which may or may not survive.
He had a good chomp on the lilac and the pear tree. I don’t know how likely it was that the latter would bear fruit this year, but I think that ship has sailed.
He took most of the young apples.
But not all.
Neither Stella nor I have any idea whether or not the tomatoes, all of which have had their tops chomped off will survive.
Most of the beet leaves are gone (I’ve no idea if they’ll keep growing without leaves), along with some of the carrot tops. And then there are the strawberries.
Almost every leaf gone, although most of the berries are still there. (Easier for the slugs and squirrels to find them.) Are these, I wonder, even worth transferring to the new raised bed in the autumn?
And then there’s this fabulous irony. A few days ago, I took a photo of these now-safely-in-the-garden, proven last year (contrary to the claim on the packaging) to be
not in the least deer-resistant plants.
I thought it would be nice for people to see what last year’s red flowers might have looked like. Small, but pretty, I thought. Now they’re gone.
On the plus side (yes, there is an extremely small plus side), apparently Antler Boy doesn’t like squash.
So, having surveyed the damage, I have now, in a pathetic attempt at a barn door/horse solution, dragged the rotten disparate part of the old gate out of the woods, in the hope that this might add enough of a deterrent.
Bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard bastard.
