So, about the garden...

A cute picture of Sander from a while ago. It just makes me smile.

The garden.

Yeah, there’s a reason I’m not writing about it.

Because it makes me want to cry.

And murder.

But I’m past the denial and anger stages, sort of, and I’m just about into the acceptance stage.

The worst drought in fifty years, plus the hottest July on record, ever, plus tons of new construction that have driven all the deer into our neighborhood = disaster.

There’s almost nothing left of the garden.

The deer have jumped an eight-foot fence, despite every website stating that they can’t do that.

Perhaps these are magical flying reindeer.

Perhaps my fence is two inches shorter than eight feet.

But really, what happened is that there’s no food and no water for any animals. We have skunks dying in the back yard, desperate to get to the dog’s water bowl.

Ants, spiders and scorpions are surrounding the house, looking for a way in. We have one chicken left, out of ten. The rest have succumbed to the heat or to animals dragging them away, because there’s no other food.

And so, the deer come into my garden. 

They ate every fucking tomato. Hundreds of them. Cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, pear tomatoes, grape tomatoes. Big ones, little ones, green ones.

And they ate them the week before they turned ripe.

I got a few cherry tomatoes, sweet and tender and amazing, the week before the deer discovered they could jump the fence.

And that was it.

I went away for three days in early June.

When I came back, late at night, I pulled into the driveway and there, in the middle of my tomatoes, was a deer.

I was like a madwoman, thinking that the deer had somehow wandered in and hadn’t done any damage yet.

I jumped out of the car, honking the horn and screaming obscenities, and ran right at the deer. Probably not safe. Probably not smart.

Probably not the best role model for two small children who were awakened from a slumber in their car seats, wanting to go home, watching their mother yell and rant and attack a large hoofed mammal.

And then, in front of me, the stupid starving deer jumped the fence.

I looked around, realized that perhaps it was stupid to charge a deer.

And then I realized that it was all gone.

The tomatoes.

The Swiss chard.

The pumpkins -- oh, those were sad. They left the vines, looking like a fine lace pattern all over ground, but ate the leaves. Left the green melons alone, never to ripen, to die in the heat.

The lettuce was gone, and the green pepper plants. Eaten down to the stems, those were.

Catnip, gone.

Beans looked as though they’d never been planted in the first place.

There was, however, one bright spot.

They ate every green and red pepper on all 14 pepper plants, but they did leave one plant, full of habenero peppers. Beautiful little orange peppers, wrinkling in the sun, too hot to touch, or even to smell.

It does make me smile to think that one deer tried one and was running around in circles, lips smoking, warning the others to stay away.

I’d like to shoot them, but we live in the city limits.

I asked a very nice policeman what would happen if I shot one.

“Do you live in the city?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know that it’s not hunting season and that you can’t shoot a gun or an arrow in the city limits?”

Yes, I said. I don’t care. I just want to know how much trouble, exactly, we’re talking about.

A little trouble and I might consider it.

“A LOT of trouble,” he said. “Not worth doing it, just for tomatoes. You’re looking at a LOT of trouble.”

So I asked Mark if maybe we could have some guys come, the kind who hunt, and maybe they could sit outside, with a silencer, and shoot a couple and take them away.

And he looked at me, and I could see him contemplating just what he had gotten into, with this wife of his who was willing to bring men with rifles and silencers into her home, and said, “Um, honey, the kind of men who would shoot deer out of season, and who would come to your house in the middle of the night and kill living creatures for money.... Well, I’m not sure you really want to do business with them.”

Oh. Yeah.

And so, I’m ignoring the garden.

Hoping for fall.

Waiting to replant.

And to build a taller fence.