Garden's 'Last Gasp' Part Two

There's been an unintended twist involving my recent blog entry about fall’s “last gasp” in the garden. A reader commented about her frustration that thanks to the deer, her garden was mainly gray these days, as in dusty miller and not much else. I could empathize. Every spring and about this time every fall, I told her, the four-footed herd hanging out in the old orchard behind St. Pat’s has been visiting my garden for late night snacks (mainly youngsters, judging by the tracks I've found in the beds). That was last week. Irony of ironies, this morning my husband found a small deer RIP at the curb by our mailbox---apparently a victim of Route 25 late night traffic. Equally ironic, my long-suffering spouse had just bought another bottle of anti-deer spray with which to try to protect our poor euonymous. This certainly wasn't the intended outcome in the battle of plant vs. deer. But then, sadly, coexistence in the garden doesn't always have a happy ending.