Our Garden, the Deer and Blaze

Becky and I have put in a garden again this year. This will be the 12th year we have done so since moving out to the country. There is just something really satisfying about tilling the soil, planting seeds and cultivating the plants once they push up through the soil and eventually picking fresh vegetables and eating them at the dinner table during the summer months.

Some years, we have planted more than others, and some years we have been rewarded more for our efforts than others. Our first year, along with everything else, we planted three rows of black-eyed peas, and they really looked nice when they first pushed out of the ground. They had gotten about four inches tall and a healthy looking dark green color when we decided to take a weekend trip to College Station to visit our son at college. Upon our return home, all that was left was about an inch of stem sticking out of the ground. It looked like someone had taken a lawn mower and gone down the rows. It seems our neighborhood deer herd, which numbered around 15 or so at the time, also liked tender pea and bean plants, and they came to visit while we were gone. Needless to say, we didn't pick peas that summer, however, later that year, our neighbors bought a Black Lab puppie named Blaze that grew into one of the biggest Labs I've ever seen, and he loved to chase the deer and was relentless in doing so all over the east side of the Seven Wires subdivision we live in. During his seven or eight years of life, we didn't have to worry about deer in our part of the neighorhood and, needless to say, during that time we had some pretty good gardens.

Unfortunately, Blaze has been gone now for a few years, and the deer have returned which has led to several hit and miss growing seasons that usually depends on how hot and dry it gets. Last year, during one of the hottest, driest summers we've had in several years, the deer decided for the first time that the tomato plants looked pretty good and, one night in June, they destroyed 18 large plants that were loaded with tomatos that were about to ripen, so we didn't get a single tomato all summer. Regardless, we are giving it another go this year and have come up with some new strategies for trying to keep the deer out of everything including the tomatoes, but sure do miss that dog.