Reading a New Yorker magazine from September (does anyone stay caught up on reading this magazine?), I smiled out loud at a cartoon showing a woman talking on the phone.
She says: "I hate country living – I just like country-living magazines."
This cartoon resonates with me for a couple of reasons. One, I live in the country, and, two, I write for magazines that focus on country living; in fact one of them is named Living the Country Life, and the other is Country Gardens.
Like the woman in the cartoon, many people hate country living. They can't get used to the idea of having to drive five miles to buy a carton of milk, or 30 miles to big shopping malls.
And, then there's gardening; you know it ain't easy. Coping with countless critters that spend their lives trying to undo what you do is not for the faint of heart or mind. The list is long. Voles, moles (volemoles for short), rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs . . . and, perhaps the most reliably destructive: deer.
Deer are living, breathing, hooved-rat, grazing machines. I've seen plants eaten to nubs, never to regain growth they lost to deer. One horticulturalist, explaining why this can happen, told me deer saliva contains a growth inhibitor. Which seems nature's big joke on deer. Not funny. Even if they take a bite and kill or stunt a plant, they just move on to others.
For my part, I plant enough for myself and the deer, too.
And I concede losses of some plants, including most of my hellebores. Usually, deer get to Lenten rose blooms before I enjoy them. But, this year, I lazily let my plants get mostly covered up with oak leaves; some hellebore leaves were exposed. They, of course, became deer snackage. I figured I wouldn't have any blooms, either. Again.
But, wait, what's that? Walking among the raggedy ruins of two of my favorite hellobores this week, I scratched away the leaf cover, and what did I see – burgundy blooms, apparently saved by their habit of drooping their heads, thus eluding deer, which are known to be visually impaired.
No big deal, you say. Just a few blooms on a beaten-up, nibbled-down plant. But, unless you garden where the deer run wild, you can't understand how sweet this is. To save the blooms and savor the triumph, I hurriedly doused the hellebores with repellent. Score one for those of us who love country living.
Lee May blogs at LeeMaysGardeningLife.com
