Thirty-six days is a little more than a month. I have exactly that much time to finish preparing my garden for the upcoming garden tour. This morning I woke up, looked out the bedroom window and saw a large deer nibbling daintily on my rosebushes. Thirty minutes later I looked out the kitchen window and noticed that yesterday’s gusty winds had made the big garden arch tilt like a drunken sailor. An hour after that I rebooted my frozen computer and checked e-mail to find that the tour organizer was bringing some people over to see the garden. As John Denver so aptly put it, “Some days are diamonds; some days are stones.” This is clearly a stony day, when deadlines have begun turning to desperation and images of perfection are being pared down to something more manageable.
Of course challenges don’t necessarily make you delusional–sometimes they create opportunities. I took the opportunity to waltz through the garden with a spray bottle and use up all the deer repellent I had on hand. Naturally, the deer was long gone by that time, but both the deer and I are creatures of habit. If I make a habit of using the repellent, the deer may avoid making a habit of dining at my place.
I have read a number of recipes for homemade deer repellants that involve egg yolks, hot pepper sauce and other foul smelling or irritating ingredients. If I wanted I could easily whip up a large amount in the blender, which would mean one less expenditure at the garden center. However, there is a very good chance that I would make a batch, put it in the refrigerator for safe keeping and then forget about it until I inadvertently put it on a salad or was driven back by the sulfurous odor of rotting egg yolks. Given that I am an absent-minded salad maker and sometimes forget to rotate my refrigerator stock, a commercial product seems a safer bet.
I wrote “deer repellent” on the shopping list and added “pea gravel,” because I need it to straighten out the garden arch. Ideally, the legs of the arch would be set in cement, which any fool should be able to do without professional help. Any fool but me, that is. I have always felt that combining my inherent clumsiness with something as serious as cement would be a recipe for disaster. Eschewing cement, I set the legs of the garden arch in deep holes filled with pea gravel and topped with tamped-down earth. This works pretty well and it takes repeated gusty wind blasts to knock the arch askew. Unfortunately we have just experienced about twelve hours of repeated gusty wind blasts. Now the holes have to be dug out and additional pea gravel added. Fortunately for me, the arch is further anchored by a very well-established climbing rose, with exceptionally thick and thorny canes. Of course, those canes have a habit of getting in the way when I am trying to steady the arch.
One thing is certain–there will be blood. I could cut the rose canes way back before righting the arch, but that would mean no climbing roses for the garden tour and even more bloodshed, as the climber is an excellent glove shredder. I haven’t been able to find ground stakes long enough to keep the arch in place without the help of the pea gravel, but maybe I’ll check again at the hardware store. They also carry gardening gloves, which is a good thing because I will need a couple of pairs.
I think the official garden inspection went well, though I was not here to welcome the visitors. I had a lunch engagement and I felt that it was much more productive for me to go out to a restaurant that served wine than to stay at home and apologize for my tipsy-looking garden arch. When I came home, I was relieved to find that the garden inspectors had left and the deer had not returned. A brief shower had failed to remove the deer repellant that I sprayed on earlier in the day, which was fortunate because the lunch date interfered with my plan to buy more spray.
Eventually it will all come together. For the moment though, I will channel Scarlett O’Hara, heroine of Gone With the Wind. After many trials and tribulations including both the Civil War and marital skirmishes with her scapegrace husband, Rhett Butler, Scarlett closed out the epic movie with the line, “Tomorrow I’ll think of some way”¦after all, tomorrow is another day.” I second that.