Oh, Deer

I've been discouraged. And it's not just because summer has been noticeably absent. The deer have been enjoying a free salad bar, courtesy of moi, so I've largely avoided the back part of the vegetable garden. It's now something of an overgrown mess. Earlier today, I went out to snip some raspberry leaves (more on that later) and, as I'm prone to do, wandered around the garden. By golly, there's pea and bean plants climbing the tipi! (You might have to squint.) Could my ingenious deer-scarer-awayer be working? It might be!

A couple of weeks ago I tied a pie plate to the tipi. It blows around and...bangs. A-ha! Noise. Could that be helping? I don't know but suddenly this strange feeling of hope came over me. Egad. Maybe we'll get some peas this year. And then...gasp...I started weeding! Thistles. Grass. Dandelion. Anything that shouldn't be there. And before you knew it, the tipi had a dirt floor. Soft and fluffy, at that. I could feel a smile. And, unlike the last few times I was out there, I didn't swear once!

There's still a lot of weeding to do. Good Lord, there's a lot. And I won't be sharing any pictures of it. But I do feel better. Might even rig up another couple of deer-scarer-awayers. Oh. Another thing. It's getting hot out there. Could do without the 78% humidity but it feels vaguely familiar. Like, maybe...summer?

.