Acceptance

"Do deer eat it?" is the FAQ at the monthly meetings of the Durham Garden Forum.  During every meeting, the invited speaker stands at the front of the room with slides that show a new plant or lovely combination of perennials.

The slide changes and the speaker identifies the planting.  Someone from the audience asks, "Do deer eat it?"

The question is tiresome.  The answer is yes.  Yes.  Hungry deer will eat almost anything. 

Deer graze the gardens in our neighborhood.  Homeowners go to battle using deer repellants of various kinds, but they never work for very long.  For years in my garden, tall pots of autumn ferns kept the deer moving by, but this winter, the tree man limbed up the oaks and maple in my front garden. Now the deer stand in my front yard in broad daylight and reach over the containers of ferns to eat whatever they wish.

This one can barely reach over the autumn ferns to get to my favorite hosta 'Sum and Substance.'  But by stretching its neck just a little more....

 

 

What?  Is someone tapping on the window?  How rude!

When I look around our neighborhood, most of the yards are lawn, punctuated by a few choice plantings in tidy beds.  The deer make mincemeat of those offerings overnight. 

But if we all had gardens full of tender foliage, there would be plenty for the deer to eat, and enough left over for us to enjoy.  Anyone wanting deer favorites like hostas, has the option of protecting  them within a fenced back yard. 

Years ago, I installed a tiny frog pond, but no frogs came.  I hung out a hummingbird feeder, but the wasps took over.  I bought bird feeders but only attracted squirrels.

My new strategy:  Embrace the wildlife that visits my garden -- the gentle rabbit, the crafty squirrel, the regal deer.  Amend the soil with compost every year to keep the foliage growing thickly.  Then hope for the best.

I'll let you know how this works out.

 



Stone wall

Two years ago, the landscaper installed my bird fountain and drove off in his white pickup truck.  Thin gray stones left over from the project were stacked on top of the fragile hepatica along the driveway. The stones were rough and flat and irregular in shape, roughly the size of a working man's hand, palm flat, fingers splayed.

In time, the woodbine grew to cover the stones and the chipmunks climbed in and out of the pile looking for seeds.  A veneer of leaf decay accumulated in the open spaces and pill bugs and beetles made their homes there.   

This spring, those stones were used to make a rock wall.  I lay the stones out on an open space in the parking pad, selecting each stone by size, piecing them one by one along 70 feet of the driveway.  I worked for hours on sunny afternoons, sitting on the driveway, sun at my back.

Eventually a wall emerged, 10 inches high, tall enough to collect leaves and plant debris, which will decompose to create a rich dark soil for the spicebushes and wildflowers.

Here are the ingredients for making something beautiful: found stone, autumn leaves, pulled weeds, and patience.  Give it some time, lots of it.  This is the recipe for making what everyone wants for their garden.  Perfect soil.    

Hoarder

Behind the peeling copper bark of the crape myrtle is a jungle, a mass of green that hides small birds, butterfly caterpillars, and possibly a black snake, although I have never seen it.

Years ago I planted a small tidy garden on that side of the house.  Much of the garden was a single species, a tough native shrub named Virginia sweetspire, that surrounded a musclewood tree sapling.  A few years later, I added a sturdy trellis and planted a single pot of hairy pipevine for the pipevine swallowtail butterflies.

Years went by and the sweetspire inched closer to the downspout and the pipevine twined up the trellis, across the fence, and entwined itself throughout the sweetspire, which by that time had filled the entire side yard of the house.
  

I thought about this secret garden last month, in Indianapolis, where my sisters and I spent a day, sorting through the mail my mother had collected in 72 boxes over the years. 

I flew home with hundreds of greeting cards hidden in my suitcase, enough to fill several shoe boxes.  When I got to the house, I unpacked the cards and hid them in the closet.

I looked around the house for evidence of my own hoarding tendencies. A stack of papers on the kitchen table was of concern, so I wrote checks to charity and recycled the magazines. I gave away two houseplants in large terra cotta pots and some furniture from the attic.   

I looked out the window. The garden, thick and dark, leafy and green with trees, shrubs and vines  spread widely throughout our yard, front to back, side to side.  Multilayered and multispecied, the trees, shrubs and vines grew into and climbed over each other.  It was a verdant mass of green.

I stepped outside, pruners in hand, and walked to the shady side of the house.  I stepped into the tangled mass of Virginia sweetspire, watchful for snakes.  Woodbine had grown up the brick to reach the roof of the house.  I pulled down the tendrils of the vine and cut them off near the ground. It was a hot day, and it was difficult to breathe. When I was finished, I turned around to view a sea of sweetspire. The pipevine floated over the waves like a heavy green fog.   

I went back into the house for the remainder of the day.

A plant hoarder. And my stuff was growing. Every day.

For the next few weeks, thoughts of plant growth, exponentially relentless, haunted me. But one day a few weeks later, the dog started behaving oddly around the Virginia sweetspire, running wildly and barking madly at something hidden inside that hulking pile. As this went on for a week, it became clear that the mystery visitor was not moving on.

I finally saw the twin baby deer walking slowly on thin legs in the neighbors yard.  By the second day, they were running with the white tails of the small herd. Weeks later, the deer roam the neighborhood but they still visit their hidey hole in the Virginia sweetspire. What they do in there is a mystery.

They are unlikely to appreciate that a plant hoarder lives in the house, but I do.