As has been said, if something isn’t eating your plants, you’re not doing it right. Everything is eating something all the time. It’s life — microbes eating bacteria and so on up the food chain to humans eating everything edible — and frequently inedible.
Inevitably, following life’s circle, human are eaten by bacteria eaten by microbes, and so on. It isn’t limited to life on this planet, either. On a universal scale, stars and planets eat each other, and galaxies eat galaxies.
But what intrigues me is what’s eating our own garden. The deer are apparently not deterred by repellents this year. They are noshing on every plant valuable to me, their sharp eyes not missing a thing, from daylily buds to the tiniest hosta leaf under a clump of Mexican petunias to the three new leaves of my sweet potato vine.
It’s been a population-busting year for deer. We recently counted a herd of nine in the lot next door, and they are bold enough to jump fences and come into the garden — while we are in it. I don’t know if Agnes is still producing her yearly set of twins.
After several years, she may have been at the end of her life span, but she left a legacy of fine young bucks and does, passing down her disdain and nonchalance for our presence that brings them fearlessly into the garden not 20 feet from the deck to munch lily flowers and potted plants outside my studio door while I’m inside. It’s only a matter of time until they venture onto the deck and invite thems.
