w est coast g ardener gardening on the wild side I was starting to relax, thinking the garden was safely put to bed for a few months and it was time to indulge in reading novels and seed catalogues. After all, Mother Nature had done her worst. The garden had (barely) survived a late spring, lousy June and then a hot summer blast that dried up the pea vines overnight. Nothing to worry about until spring, right? Not by Gillian so – I’d reckoned without the Furry Ones. Crowley On a rare sunny winter’s day, I glanced out the window to see branchlets scattered around the California lilac so lovingly shaped into a bonsai tree. This is the same bush we bought two years ago because a gardening website declared it “deer resistant.” The doe-eyed garden wreckers obviously haven’t been online recently. Most likely a young one tried a few branches, decided they weren’t dinner worthy and spat them out – but not before leaving a huge hole in the middle of the bush. Even though I know I’m in their territory, the blood boils as hours of work and buckets of money are turned into deer forage. It’s not that I haven’t tried to work out a truce with them. In summer I spray my homemade deer repellent only on plants dearest to my heart (98% of them) and leave a few alone as sacrifices to the gods … sorry, the deer. They were so grateful after finishing off the Euonymus that they waited until the fall monsoon washed off the nasty-tasting stuff to move onto the rest of the garden. I wonder if there’s some species of cacti that can survive cool, wet weather? Soon after this episode I started to notice the lawn looking like the practice range for mad golfers. Divots of grass everywhere but not a tee in site. Finally we discovered that the midnight Tiger Woods were bandit-faced raccoons gorging themselves on night crawlers. Unfortunately, unlike Tiger, they don't replace their turf divots. Overall, I don’t blame the wildlife as much as some of my neighbours. A few soft-hearted ones feel they must help the local wildlife to survive winter in Canada’s Banana Belt by leaving out food for the deer, raccoons, crows and feral cats. Apparently not aware of Social Media for Wildlife, they also attract all the neighbourhood cats (Fluffy, why are you getting so fat?) not to speak of rats, mice and Jonathan Seagull who is happy now to live on the mountain top, far from having to earn a living on the beach. You’d think I could cope with all this. After all, I’ve survived gardening on the prairies where hail regularly smashed hostas into mush and early frost turned tomatoes and beans black in mid-August. It’s just that I thought I was coming to a gardener’s paradise here on the Peninsula where everything grows without much effort. As I draw down the blinds to hide the devastation, I think I can hear a raccoon chortle … or is it an experienced Island gardener?
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