Well played, deer, well played.

Every time I pass that bush I am tormented by the question�did you choose to leave one single blossom as a taunt, a reminder of What Could Have Been if only you had let the azalea be?

Or was that just pure sloppiness on your part? Did you somehow overlook that one swelling bud?

I will never know, and thus you've left me in perpetual torment.

I hate your guts.

It's spring.

And with spring comes my nightly walkabout, where I survey bits and pieces of the garden. Right now the daffodil meadow is in full flight. The lilac hedge, started from tiny whips just a few years ago, promises to be awash in blossoms this spring unless we have a late frost.

Those would be the high points.

And now the lows. The deer continue to browse my shrubs. Look, I know that I have chosen to live in their environment and hey, there's a price to be paid for living in this much nature.

But my azaleas? Is this really necessary? Really?

Oh, and most laughably, the burning bush.

I agonized for years about buying a burning bush. They can grow into 20 foot balls and I'm not particularly good at pruning and shaping shrubs. Twenty foot balls of anything herbalicious is more than I want to see in my gardens.

Yet, yet I wanted that lovely splash of eyeball searing orange-red the foliage gives every fall reflected in my pond. So a few years ago I took the plunge.

I need not have worried.

Every spring the deer graze the poor burning bush down to about its original size. It is never, ever going to grow to be more than about 30 inches tall.

The burning bush is surrounded by hydrangeas, plants that produce white pom pom flowers late every summer. These bushes have to be pruned every spring. Do the deer graze the hydrangeas, thus saving me about an hour's work? No, no they do not. No, the deer scrupulously leave the hydrangeas alone.

Well played, deer, well played. Eat the bushes I want to watch blossom or grow, ignore the bushes that could actually use a little grazing.

I hate your guts.

--Marn