07/21/2025 Monday 69-86F Sunny
Yesterday morning the ADT alarm suddenly rang. I rushed to the window and caught two deer walking on the driveway contently heading out. “Some plants have bad luck!” I suspected.
Yes, indeed-they ate my tomato plants, my prunus mume, and my gladiolus’s flower spikes. “Poor tomatoes!” I rearranged the netting which I used to cover them. I must admit that I didn’t close the netting tight enough yesterday but even though, how could the deer just be so lucky to come right before I planned to fix it?
I inspected my tomatoes; the damage wasn’t severe, but many young shoots were gone. It would take some days for my plants to recover. While I nipped off the ripped branches with a pruner, I happened to notice that a huge worm was resting on a branch near a tomato leaf. The green color of its body was so similar to the plant’s color that I almost couldn’t locate it at the second glance.
I was very afraid of worms, especially the soft body ones like earthworm. To me, being a home gardener, the first challenge was how to face those worms. I remembered that at the very beginning when I started to hoe the soil, just after one dig, a lot of earthworms crawled out as if I just opened a can of worms. I screamed, threw the hoe onto the ground and escaped into the house. Until next day, after carefully observing several feet away to make sure there was no worm anymore, I dared return to the site and picked up the hoe. Now, almost three years later, in spite of the fact that I still feared worms, every time if I encountered them, I either just turned my head away to avoid seeing them, or covered them with soil.
While about this huge green worm grown on my tomato plants, I had seen its type before. One night in late October 2023, the first frost of the year came. Next morning when I went out to check my vegetables, I found that my tomato plants were all killed and hung lifelessly onto the bamboo poles. However, the scene which amazed me was that on the tip of some branches, I saw large worms stop there, stretching their heads toward the sky as they were crying for rescue. In fact, they had frozen to death.
Because of that miserable scene, last year I cleared the tomato plants before the first frost.
Later that day, when I was sitting on the porch drinking tea, one deer showed up in the woods opposite my house. It cautiously snuck out, stopped, looked in my direction. Upon seeing me, it was stunned as if it didn’t expect to find me there. Then it looked around, hesitating, finally paced toward south. Seconds later, another deer appeared, followed the first one; and a third one, and a fourth one. They obediently moved along the street, occasionally giving me a peek. All of a sudden, a strange thought occurred to me: The ones I caught this morning on my driveway must belong to this group because they were all young deer very similar in size. Perhaps they liked the fresh taste of my plants therefore they invited two friends to join them for a free buffet provided by my garden 😥. Lucky that I was on the porch and deterred them.
My feeling toward deer is complex—it mingles both love and frustration. Watching them hanging around or jumping and chasing each other on the street, that scene was lovely; while once they invaded the garden and swept away all my and the plants’ efforts, I couldn’t help cursing them. I already did my best to avoid planting something they might like; but in most cases, they were curious and loved to try any younger plants; if they didn’t like the taste, they spat out. But the damage caused to the plants couldn’t be erased!
It was two years ago in late spring; one day I squatted at the vegetable bed weeding. By chance I turned my head to reach for something, the corner of my eye caught a baby deer—it was about four feet away from me, alone, browsing curiously about my yard (probably it was its first time to be my uninvited guest); since I was squatting it didn’t really notice me. However, this unexpected encounter startled both of us. I rose, without knowing what I should do about it. Which made it aware of my existence. It was so shocked to see me thus it turned on its heel and scared away.
I couldn’t forget about it. It was just so cute, super cute, probably only one month old; its wide, innocent eyes and the white spots speckled allover its little body melted my heart. Because of it, I believed I could forgive all the damage its species did to my garden. And most of the time, I regarded them a bunch of spoiled, playful neighborhood kids, who really didn’t know what they should do and what shouldn’t. So they randomly broke into the neighbors’ gardens, picking flowers, vegetables, and fruit. When they accidentally were caught red handed, they just gave you an innocent smile then scattered away. Being annoyed with them was a waste of time and mood.
Other than deer, groundhogs were another nuisance to gardeners. But this summer I didn’t see them often—in fact I hadn’t seen them for quite a while. Perhaps groundhogs weren’t as adorable as deer; while to me, I felt they were more attached to me. In June 2023, because of some skin issue I had to stay at home. Those summer days were long; sometimes the whole afternoon I couldn’t see a soul, therefore once the groundhog which was resident in the neighbor’s back yard crept in, I felt my loneliness was consoled. From the sunroom window, I watched it duck into my yard through the side fence, searching suspiciously for any potential threats. If it found the environment was safe, it would move swiftly across the driveway toward the peach tree—there were plenty of fallen peaches on the lawn under the tree where this little fuzzy guy could enjoy a free feast. At the beginning it stood on its hind feet since the front ones had to hold the fruit for eating; then it would lay its belly on the lawn with the two front feet sending peaches to its mouth, which looked very relaxing; a while later it felt tired and changed its position again-now it lay on its side and kept eating. Its postures amused me since they were very much like us reading books—first we held the book in our hands and stood under a tree; then we moved to bed or sofa, tossed around whether lying on our belly or side as long as we felt comfortable reading like that.
But the groundhog (at least the one which came to my back yard) had its own morality: It never took my yard as its toilet room. So the consequence was: It came, ate plenty, then left; sometime later it returned, continued to eat, and went away again…It could appear in my back yard dozens of times per day. I had witnessed it transformed from a starving small guy into a clumsy fat ball. The growing size of its body also made it seemingly more difficult every time when it tried to squeeze across the fence from underneath--I really worried that it might get stuck there 😅.
Last May we removed the peach tree, mainly because it had been diseased and was too old to be cured. When the workers sawed it down, we found its trunk was rotten to the core. Therefore, there was no “June Fall” anymore last June; and all the juicy, crunchy, sweet peaches were gone. The groundhog must have been very disappointed. Since then, it came to my yard less and less—it had to find its new sugar source somewhere else so it could put on as much weight as possible before winter came.
Sometimes I wonder: Had I known it earlier about all the challenges of being a home gardener, would I still want to be one? The answer would be yes—because I love nature, so I want to invite nature to my yard. And this job can only be done by a gardener.
As Voltaire said in his book “Candide”—"all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”.