The Insults of Spring

Workshop blog posting

2/29/08

The Insults of Spring

A cold and moderately wet drive down to the U.S., a good-natured border guard (who knows us and waves us through) barely looks at us and our heavily laden car as we came through, a disappointing two-weeks worth of mail. It is noteworthy that when you get mail at two week intervals how little mail interest arrives. There are the good magazines, of course: The New Yorker, Harper’s, American Spectator, Atlantic; and there are bills, which are important but not interesting; and there are a few random adverts, but not nearly as many as I receive every morning in the overnight email. But, the one great blessing of snail mail, no communiques urging me to have my penis enlarged.

The crocuses (the croci?) are up and open thoughout the garden which means they got at least a few minutes of sun today. Big purple, yellow, and white blossoms reminding us that it’s gonna happen! Daffodils are 6-8 inches tall everywhere I look; Indian plum bushes are almost fully leafed out, the apple tree buds have discernible color, the currant and forsythia bushes are also pushing color in blossoms and leaves. It’s all looking good. Until I check on the tulips.

The tulips--I plant about 4-5 dozen each year, so there are plenty of them around, even though they don’t all come back from year to year—were about 4 inches tall or so when I left two weeks ago. Today, they are plentiful, but they are about three-quarters of an inch tall. And there are footprints all over the place. The local deer have dropped by while we were gone and munched them all almost right to the dirt level.

That’s the first time this has happened down in Point Roberts, although deer are notorious tulip eaters. In Roberts Creek, B.C., where we have big woods and deer and bear and cougar around, the deer are such a burden that I don’t plant tulips anymore. But here? The deer population is small because there’s not enough habitat for many of them. We see them occasionally, so I usually put all our saved hair scraps out around the tulips when they start to come up. Somewhere, I read that they are put off by human hair and, since Ed and I continue to have a lot of it, we save the cuttings to fend off the deer. And it or something has worked. Two weeks ago when we left, I did think that I ought to put the hair wreaths out, but I lazed out: plenty of time when we get back.

Yet another opportunity to be proved wrong. An hour after we arrive, the remains of the tulips are hair encircled. Who knows? Maybe there’s something there, still under the ground with a bud in it, even if its leaves are severely truncated. Something else to wait for. And the birds will eventually use the hair for their nests.