Reginald, My Dear

Here, Reggie! Here, boy!

This is Reginald. He was the greatest pet you could ever want. First of all, he was virtually maintenance-free. That is a huge plus when it comes to having a pet. We didn’t have to feed him because he fed himself, chomping and munching all over the neighborhood. His forages included our yard, which was annoying when he would eat something we planted just two days ago, but he was self-sustaining, food-wise, and you can’t say that about many pets.

We didn’t have to teach him to poop and pee outside, either. He did that all over the neighborhood as well, including our yard, which was definitely annoying if you weren’t looking at the ground and you stepped on a bunch of blueberry-size poop pellets that deer are fond of pooping (although that is much less worse than stepping in a fresh heap of dog poop, you have that on my good authority). Furthermore, we didn’t have to groom Reggie or take him to the vet for rabies shots, all of which was a genuine money-saver.

Fertilizer or land mine—you decide. [photo by hirun]

For all his neighborhood peregrinations and his frequent forays into the surrounding forests, Reginald preferred to bed down in our yard pretty much on a nightly basis. This display of loyalty is the definition of a real pet and a contributing factor why we gave him the title of “Greatest Pet Ever,” much to the chagrin of our cat who, it should be noted, came in a distant second in the World’s Greatest Pet competition due to her demands to be fed and to have her litter box regularly cleaned.

Reggie would plunk down anywhere in our yard, but typically he’d stretch out in the corner of the garden that’s shady and woefully overgrown, a spot that probably reminded him of the ungroomed character of his natural home in the wilds. Reggie bunked at our place despite the fact that early in our pet/owner relationship I’d chase him out of our yard whenever I saw him. I reasoned that he was snacking on the hostas that were desperately trying to survive various maladies such as inattentive care and low watering, and the least I could do was defend the plants from being totally disappeared. So I’d spring into action, waving my arms and yelling clever insults like, Deer! Go! Get!

Reginald would remain cool during these histrionics, chewing contentedly on something we’d planted the other day and regarding me with disdain from the shadowed glen of his retreat. He probably knew that if it came down to fisticuffs, he’d drub me with his hooves like I was a speed bag. Plus, he could butt the living phlegm out of me with those horns.

But after a while he’d get up, shake his antlers like clearing the cobwebs after a siesta, stroll insouciantly toward the front fence, turn back to give me one last eyeroll, and leap over the 48-inch-high barrier as easy as jumping over a length of garden hose. Then he’d saunter up the street.

Next morning he’d be back, bedded down in his leafy lair, shorn hosta leaves hanging out of his mouth. Now that’s loyalty!

Reggie viewed from a back window.

Reginald was a black-tailed deer, Odocoileus hemionus. There are many black-tailed deer in our valley, and it’s not unusual to see whole families of Odocoileus strolling the through our neighborhoods, stopping now and then to snack on somebody’s daylilies and arrogantly crossing the streets with complete disregard for painted crosswalks and charging SUVs. Deer simply adore the smorgasbord of civilized life. People will stop and gawk at these little parades as if they're witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime phalanx of centaurs marching past. Ooh! Deer!

Not every local townie approves of these roving bands of herbivores, and lots of energy and expense has been devoted to keeping deer out of folks’ properties. Eight-foot-high fences are popular, eight feet being the lawful limit around here and the theoretical vertical limit for leaping deer, although yes there are stories of deer leaping over eight-footers easy as a sneeze.

Natural deterrents are also popular. No, you can’t count firearms as “natural deterrents,” although there are plenty of people who would like to say otherwise. I’m referring more to plants that deer don’t care to eat, so even if Odocoileus invades your property, they are likely to leave your plantings alone, although they very well might leave behind piles of poop pellets.

Here are some plants that deer don’t like (but sometimes will eat anyway):

• Foxgloves and poppies. These plants are toxic to deer, which is as good a reason as any for not eating them. Deer that do eat them help prove the theory of natural selection.

• Marigolds. The deal with marigolds is that only corny people plant them, and you’re not corny, are you?

• Lamb’s ear. A deer eating lamb’s ears sounds a little cannibalistic, I think. So deer probably just don’t go there.

• Spirea. We have a spirea out front where any deer could chomp it and the plant is still there so QED.

• Lavender and other aromatics. Deer aren’t really hip to finer fragrances, you probably wouldn’t either if you never took a bath, although deer have been found luxuriating in backyard swimming pools so maybe I’ve got that one wrong.

You might have noticed that I’ve been referring to Reginald in the past tense. After being a constant in our lives for nearly three years, one day Regggie did not show up. Then weeks passed, and months, and all the seasons came and went without Reggie’s antlers peering out from the tangle of brush that passes for our side yard “garden.” Whether he’d found a mate and relocated to greener neighborhoods up north, or whether he’d been eaten by a cougar or felled by a hunter, we’ll never know. To say the cat was relieved is an understatement.

I know what you’re wondering. If Reginald was such a pet, did he come to me when I called his name? Puh-lease! Deer don’t have names!

Me Ignore Plain Facts

Tulips, irises, phlox, alliums, hyacinth, and some other growy things compete for the last bits of open space.

There are fundamental gardening tenets that you shouldn’t ignore. In fact, they are so basic, so common sense, that you couldn’t possibly ignore them.

But you do.

I said “you” in those opening paragraphs, but I didn’t mean to imply you the reader specifically. I was just doing a little editorial ducking and covering behind the second-person pronoun “you,” rather than using the much more descriptive and accurate first person pronouns, “me” and “I.”

But me do.

It happened innocently enough. There was a huge nothing in the beds by the back fence, a yawning void of bone-dry mulch covering soil that was equally dry and compacted as hard as oak plank flooring. Nary a growing green thing. Even the invasive plants refused to populate this botanical vacuity despite the fact I’d assured them there would be water and bat guano and other perks freely provided, but they turned up their cockleburs and grew the other way. Ingrates—just when I need you. I planted stuff—bushes and some perennials and things I lost the little plastic tags to and had no idea what they were—and hoped for the best. Which would be anything living and close to green in color for at least part of the year.

It was at this stage of the game that I willfully ignored a gardening fundamental: Don’t plant plants too close together. In my defense, I couldn’t help myself. There was all this empty space just begging to be planted or more to the point, covered up.

None of what transpired was my fault. Put the blame on the greenhouse where we buy our plants. Have you seen this greenhouse? It’s roughly the size of an aircraft carrier and the far end squishes to a tiny vanishing point. You step inside (okay, Me step inside) and you’re instantly surrounded by thousands of healthy plants all screaming: Good Gaea, get me out of this tiny black plastic container! My roots are bound tighter than a nun’s asshole!

Me, being a sucker for pleading plants—especially ones that offer up discomforting metaphors—thinks: Why just two penstemon when five gets you more color sooner? And while we’re on the subject, Why just white? Why not this incredible version called Stratospheric Blue? And a couple three of those, whatever they are, because it says on this little plastic tag that they grow fast. And wouldn’t these little guys be cool although it says on the accompanying tag that they need well-drained soil and the clay soil at the back of our property has the consistency of an engine block. But, nothing ventured!

I hustled boxes of them home. Out in the Empty Space I set out the plants in their little plastic pots, arranging them in a pleasing nonsensical pattern. I kept shifting around their positions because there were so many variables, given the quantity of starts I’d selected and my deep desire to cover up bare soil as soon as possible, possibly within the next hour. I cored out holes and settled my new purchases into nests of organic planting compost. I watered those aching-to-be-free roots.

Eventually some died, sure. Well, a preponderance, actually. But some hung in there, as grim as conditions might have been—wrong pH, bad magnesium, sporadic sunlight—and managed to survive. Those that didn’t make it were quickly replaced with randomly selected, your-guess-is-as-good-as-mine experimental plantings, usually things that sounded colorful and resistant to inept and intermittent care. I didn’t care that the tags clearly instructed: Plant 18 inches apart. Why plant eighteen inches apart when by any standard of logic twelve inches apart would be even better and fuller and greener! Do I hear ten? Me do!

Cranes bill, tulips, and valerian try to stop a tsunami of Japanese maple.

And sure enough, a couple of years later the empty beds started to fill in. Things got leafy, flowery, bulky. They filled in nicely, I might even say exceptionally (taking into account that I have a low bar). And they grew. And grew.

Another year and things began to get jumbly. Branches intermingled, leaves overlapped, species intertwined. Inevitably, survival instincts took over. No more Nice Darling Plant Fresh From The Greenhouse. The evolutionary knives came out. Branches stretched and got spindly in an effort to rob neighboring plants of sunlight, roots tussled underground as they vied for water and nutrients. Organization and proportion gave way to chaos and ruthlessness.

I know all this from personal observation and the horticultural methodology I’m developing that I refer to as Gardening in Retrospect, which basically involves realizing how much you’ve screwed up and reflecting on those mistakes from the relative safety of the cement patio. Gardening in Retrospect has certain harmonies with Darwinism and Nature Knows Best. And if you don’t mind, me retrospecting while sipping a nice cold IPA.

The World's Clumsiest Tree

This sad twisted clown of a plant is just crying out for love...

It’s time to focus on the very center of things, the locus of our botanical netherworld, which is the pyracantha tree/shrub that grows at the front of our property.

Pyracantha is an evergreen shrub and classified in the rose family. That doesn’t stop our stalwart little pyracantha from aspiring—Pinocchio-like—to be a real tree, but its resemblance to a real tree is sketchy. The Tim Burton-esque assortment of trunks doesn’t so much resemble a tree as it does a giant drunk alien spider trying to do a hornpipe.

It’s not the pyracantha’s fault. A succession of previous homeowners with lofty arboreal aspirations saw fit to trim off the lower branches to encourage the plant to look more like a regular tree. These limb surgeries weren't exactly artful, and as a result the plant has been rendered a tad grotesque. I prefer to think of it as an awkward nonconformist, like the most uncoordinated kid at the prom who won’t stop dancing. There’s not a whole lot of grace or dignity—and for that you have to love it. It’s trying to fit in but in an awkwardly sweet way. It’s a mutt, a fifteen-point underdog, a botanical Don Quixote. It flounders around, blissfully unaware of its clumsy presentation.

The Tim Burton-esque assortment of trunks doesn’t so much resemble a tree as it does a giant drunk alien spider trying to do a hornpipe.

I can’t help but root for our pyracantha no pun intended. Just looking at it replenishes my stores of empathy, and that’s a tank that we all could stand to top off.

Unfortunately, in terms of likability, the pyracantha keeps tripping over its own dick. It has some of the wickedest thorns in the natural world (some botanical nerds might insist that these are not thorns but prickles). They can be up to three inches long (the thorns, not the nerds) and jut out at right angles from every limb, branch, and twig so that the interior of the canopy is black hole of pain trust me on that. The needles are so hypodermically sharp that ancient tribes used to use them to sew the skins of alligators to make tote bags.

Actually, I made that up. I have no idea if ancient tribes sewed alligator skins, but it sounds plausible when you say it with a straight face. Anyway, in ancient times I’m sure toting was a widely practiced if not downright inescapable activity, so the sewing notion isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, especially where alligator territory meets up with pyracantha’s Hardiness Zones of 5 through 9.

By the way, the well-deserved common name for pyracantha is firethorn.

Firethorn has yet another unfortunate attribute: It’s pretty much of a zombie: it keeps coming back from the dead, staggering out of the dirt after you’ve made every attempt to finish it off. We’ve had other pyracantha in our yard, an inevitability which is sometimes referred to as a conspiracy of pyracantha (actually it’s just me that calls it that). Trying to eliminate them simply pisses the plant off. You can cut it down and pour vinegar on the roots and gasoline over the stumps and torch it off and then dig up whatever is left and toss that into the yard waste bucket and next spring it will just reappear, perhaps a few feet away from the original spot, strong, green, and full of insidious intent. (I should add that this kind of tenacity is not entirely underappreciated at Schiddygarden because anything that grows here of its own free will tends toward the plus column.)

Deb hates this tree/shrub. She’s been attacked by its thorns while attempting to care for other nearby plants and she now harbors smoldering resentment. She thinks the trunks are homely and diminish our curb appeal (such as it is). She’s convinced the plant is dangerous if not consciously mean-spirited, and that any redeeming qualities cannot overcome the negatives. Count her in for the pouring of vinegar and gasoline.

I understand. This firethorn is about as bad-ass as a tree/shrub can get. I’ve gotten stabbed enough times that I do not go forth to prune the beast without girding my precious loins with heavy jeans, a canvass long-sleeve shirt, thick leather gloves (like really thick), a hard hat (a baseball-type cap is easily penetrated—ridiculously easily, trust me), goggles over my glasses, and hard ear protectors. Even then, pain is coming.

And yet:

In the fall, blushes of orange begin to appear. These are the berries (pomes in botanical nerdspeak) just beginning to ripen, and they are the crown jewel, the awesome possum, the total bomb of the plant known as pyracantha. Over the course of the summer the irascible branches have been busy producing fruit—pea-size berries that grow in thick clusters—and late in the season the greenish berries start to plumpen (if that’s not a word it should be) and start to take on autumnal color. Over the subsequent few weeks the colors deepen, nearly imperceptibly, until early winter when the branches suddenly erupt with blood-red sprays.

Pyracantha stylin' berries in the snow.

It's a totally cool phenomenon, especially at that time of year, and it certainly justifies (in my mind) keeping the plant. I just like it.

But hold on—the best is yet to happen: The drunk robins are coming!