Garden Digest

Cucurbita Pepo

 What might look like a scene of casual waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive, is more likely Linus and Snoopy standing guard against the local deer herd to protect their harvest.  Likewise, when the small-time backyard gardener tries to plant a little pumpkin patch for the first time along the ragged edge of a wild forest, he had better be prepared to hire out shifts of these kinds of sentries.    

One evening, with my own attempted patch, I thought I might have caught a glimpse of two deer standing out back on the hill, heads rotating around sniffing for intruders like me, one with a measuring tape in hoof checking to see if the vines had reached the recommended six feet long, the other, a shorter deer, (wearing evaluator's glasses?), assessing each of my three pumpkins for a proper bright orange color.  I came to realize that summer that maybe it was more wise to skip reading my gardening books and instead watch how antsy the deer get around all of my vegetation and try to beat  

them to the punch by secretly harvesting in the middle of the night before their planned feast.  The term gardening suggests a quaint process of planting, tending then eating.  Change around some of the lettering of the word, and you get 'Guarding,' which truly seems a more accurate description for the backwoods planter.