The Audacity of Survival

It is not nice to garden anywhere.  Everywhere there are violent winds, startling once-per-five-centuries floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting freezes, abusive and blasting heats never known before.  There is no place, no garden, where these terrible things do not drive gardeners mad. ...  Everything grows for everybody.  Everything dies for everybody, too.  

---Henry Mitchell, The Essential Earthman:  Henry Mitchell on Gardening, p. 3

There is that, of course.  Bad things happen -- as well as good.  Some of that is your own doing; some of it not.  This year -- my first real year -- there has been a little of it all.  Early spring.  Late freeze.  Historic drought and record setting heat.  Nibbling rabbits.  Novice blunders mitigated by kindly graces of the gardening gods. 

And deer.  The truth is that I can't honestly complain.  Whether due to my fencing deterrents or simple disinterest, the deer have largely left me alone.  I would like to credit my precautions, but who's to say?  The deer aren't talking. 

There has been one conspicuous exception.  Around the eastern and northern borders I planted sunflower seeds of several varieties.  Some were shorter; others the towering sentries of the plains.  Some promised hand-sized blossoms, while others presaged dinner plate proportions.  It was to be an impressive perimeter.  The seeds sprouted, the stems stretched, the leaves sprawled in all directions, and the crowns began to form.  And then one day I returned to the garden to find miniature green telephone poles where the day before had been the promise of blossoms.  Deer -- surely no rabbit is tall enough to nibble 3 and 4 and 5 feet off the ground -- had pruned the rising plants of leaf, stem and bud, leaving only the now-tailored stalk.  I couldn't complain too much.  The purpose, after all, leaned in this direction.  As anxious as I was to enjoy the showy blossoms, my reason for planting flowers in the first place was to offer the wildlife -- bugs and bees, rabbits and, yes, deer -- alternatives to my vegetables.  If the rabbits opted for the entire pantry and not just the table I had set for them, at least the deer had confined themselves to their due.

Still, I resisted carte blanche.  Just yesterday a spotted fawn, alone and hungry for quite possibly the first time in its young life, was caught nibbling at one of the few remaining stems.  Tir, front paws on the windowsill and in full voice, encouraged the intruder to look elsewhere for supper.  Lori was sympathetic toward the fawn.  Tir and I were of narrower mind.  "I would like to see at least one of them bloom," I muttered as the four little legs skittered off toward the woods. 

And then today, reconnoitering after weeding and a wee bit of watering, I saw it -- surely the expression one of those blessing smiles of the garden gods:  the survivor.  Hopefully not the last, but at least the very first.  Even Tir couldn't resist barking in celebration.

Or protective warning.  "Keep your nibbles to yourself."
And just enjoy the view.