Oh Deer

I'll start at the end of the story. A deer got into the backyard while I was away last week and enjoyed a healthy dinner of cucumber leaves, bush beans, Swiss chard, lettuce, kale, radish tops, carrot greens and parsley.

The chard is munched to a stub, as is the kale. One parsley plant stands like a little green flagpole, waving a single leaf on a single stem. The bush beans have had better days, with a third of each plant's leaves chewed off.

The cucumber trellis took the worst of it. Instead of a waist-high solid green wall of leaves and plump dangling Kirby cucumbers, there is a skeleton web of vines that makes my stomach twist.

I'm pretty sure it was a deer buffet because one Kirby had a delicate deer-sized bite taken out of it at a height taller than even an ambitiously stretching groundhog could reach.

For those gardeners who do not battle furry marauders, who enjoy the pleasure of walking right up to their plants without unlatching a gate, stepping over a pen or removing deer netting, I can only say to count your blessings.

For the rest of us, especially suburban gardeners with hungry wildlife all around, it's a constant battle.

I live a few houses off of Eagle Rock Avenue, not far from the wooded area near Mayfair Farms and just down the road from Eagle Rock Reservation. There is a small wooded lot directly behind my back fence. If there's a furry animal who likes to eat garden produce, we have them.

The good news is that they left the tomatoes and lilies alone this time.

I'm sure the deer still tell their does about the wild shrieks of rage they heard from my yard after the Great Lily Disaster of 2007. That attack came from the front gate being left open for one night. The deer ate every blossom off my fancy peach lilies and I didn't get a single bloom that year.

After that incident, as well as an ongoing battle with groundhogs, my husband and I replaced the back fence with metal mesh dug down six inches into the dirt, fenced in the edible beds and topped the side fence with deer netting to raise it to an eight-foot high barrier.

We've tried most of the known and obscure repellent strategies including scares, sprays, soap, and human hair. Heck, we even got a dog. For us, ultimately, the best offense is a strong fence.

For protecting plants you don't intend to eat, Liquid Fence (a truly nauseating spray made from putrefied eggs) still works for us to convince the deer to move along from the front-yard hosta salad bar.

The smell dissipates after a few hours but the taste remains, apparently. It is available for purchase from West Orange retailers Metropolitan Plant and Flower Exchange and Pleasantdale Nurseries.

So what happened in this case? My best guess is that the front gate was accidentally left ajar by a visiting neighbor or perhaps the water meter person. We found one distinct hoof print in the mulch by the side fence, but no other evidence to support the idea that the deer jumped it from that side.

Since this isn't the first time it's happened, I know that there's enough green left on most of the plants to recover. Sometimes, I've found, plants that have been munched have a way of bouncing back stronger than ever.

I know how lucky I am in that my suburban garden is a pleasurable hobby rather than the means to survive the winter.

In a few weeks, it will be like it never happened, minus a few salads. I'm looking forwards to complaining about being up to my eyeballs in cucumbers.