Intruders abound here at Shalom Acres, the hobby farm in Greenville’s Apple Valley that we allege belongs to us.
Calling the cops would do no good, since the interlopers aren’t your garden variety housebreakers – but what we grow is indeed high on their list of priorities.
Most of the critters at Shalom Acres are freeloaders, slipping through and under fencing or attacking from the air to make their own claim on the abundance of this place.
Only from the deer do we tolerate this mooching, since they at least repay us with entertainment – not by singing for their supper, but by dancing for it.
This happens beneath the apple tree near our meadow. Experts at stretching for overhead fruit, the deer, in a vaudevillian routine, twirl on their hind legs to snatch what they insist is theirs.
If those graceful callers could breach the chain-link around our gardens, our beguilement would surely turn to outrage. But we reserve our wrath for myriad other creatures that make light of our defenses.
Remorseless and oblivious to our splenetic outbursts, they team up against us. Even before they sprout, sunflower seeds fall prey to the scratchings of blackbirds that plunge from above and chipmunks that dart cheekily through our porous deterrents.
And – with rabbits and squirrels also in mind – nothing sows frustration more than seeing a plump heirloom tomato on the ground, abandoned after a single bite.
Let us not even mention destruction wrought on the rare occasions a woodchuck digs its way in. The website Laidback Gardener indicts these waddling despoilers as the worst nightmare of growers “who struggle to cope with their depredations and greed.”
But confirmed gardeners persevere.Their sentiments are reflected in the words of English poet Alfred Austin:
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just the body, but the soul.”
Such sunny thinking reminds us that when it comes to certain garden visitors, there’s a positive side.
Nathaniel Hawthorne captured it well in his novel “The Old Manse:”
“The humming-birds were attracted by the blossoms of a peculiar variety of bean; and they were a joy to me, those little spiritual visitants…”
Hawthorne also exulted in the multitudes of bees that “bury themselves in the yellow-blossoms of the summer-squashes… there would be a little more honey in the world, to allay the sourness and bitterness which mankind is always complaining of.”
Such is balance as we appreciate nature’s gifts and endure its annoyances.
Our dancing, apple-thieving deer offer insight on the subject. Not timid, as you might expect, they stand their ground and make confident eye contact.
Their kind roamed this fertile expanse long before humanity felled oaks to put a dwelling here. And their unflinching stare prompts long thoughts about our real estate title: On these abundant and winsome five acres we claim as ours, who are the actual intruders?
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist).
