Today, laziness and yard work prep, in hopes of recuperating from last night, where I got a plate of bad Irish stew and spent the evening in that horrific hinterland right before tossing one’s cookies. (I hope it was the stew. Otherwise I have the stomach flu going around, and that’d suck.)

Got some plants to try to replace the annual verbena, which hates this place, hates me, hates the world. Of course, the perennial homestead verbena thinks this place is the bomb, it’s never been happier, it would kiss me if it could, and hey, look at all the pretty flowers! It’s the little annual that has seen fit to die rather than face life in my yard.

I assume this is because a flat of annuals costs ten bucks, and the homestead verbena runs $4 a plant. Also, so many annuals are overbred little muthas, and this is a tough little bastard native to these parts, so it’s probably not surprising at all.

Did discover that a plant that’s been popping up all over the bed is, in fact, larkspur. No complaints about that! It’s welcome to live here.

Took out a volunteer mulberry. I still feel a pang when I kill a plant taller than I am, but there are two other full grown mulberry trees in the yard, and that one obviously wasn’t supposed to be there. I have an American beautybush to pop into that spot. Killed a few young maples. No pangs there. I used to like maples. Then I discovered that they are unkillable sonsofbitches that pop up in the middle of your flower bed and run roots like hoses. Now I am eyeing even the enormous shade trees with dislike.

I think gardening makes you mean.

Case in point, the black locust shrubs are filling in nicely. Then James and I were looking them over this morning, and went “Huh…?” Some of the shoots had been crushed and ripped off. They looked…chewed. They looked like–“Holy crap! We have deer!”

Deer! We live in a place where deer come up to the yard! It’s like Bambi! O glory! Beautiful liquid eyed, delicate-hooved deer, graceful deer with flicking ears, wonderful, wild…motherfuckers ate my locust tree!

I’m torn between being enchanted and recognizing that I am in the intial stages of a war that I, as the human, can only win through scorched earth tactics of which no moral being would approve. And I cast my mind back, to when I was at the garden shop, and I saw all those plants that proclaimed “DEER RESISTANT!” and I ignored them because hey, I wouldn’t have to worry about that.

But that’s nature for you. You want to see the pretty deer, you have to feed the pretty deer. I wouldn’t mind, if I could just get the pretty wolves in to eat the pretty deer so there’d be some kind of check on the species. In my area, the primary predator of deer is the Buick, and that just ain’t right.

Edit: OH MY GOD, THEY ATE MY LILIES!

I have been watching those lily buds for WEEKS. I have been dying to see what color they are. And now half of them are gone! GONE!

AAAAIIIGHHH! Nature, I love you, but you are cruel, cruel…