Bethy, Bethy, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

My camera-shy daughter actually allowed me to take this picture of her, as she surveyed the damage done to her shade garden by those so-called "rats on stilts." Because she labored so long over the creation of her garden and had flowers ready to bloom on her toad lillies and her mystery lily, in the blink of an eye, she went from a lover of deer into a savage huntress-in-waiting when she found the buds chomped off her lillies.

So we found spray for the plants, but it was too late for this year. Alas! I can see the "wait-until-I-taste-you-in-a-venison-burger" look in her eyes, even now.

The thing is, when Beth and Dave moved into their house, it was adorned with hideous plants in the front, including some sort of shrub that looked like a giant toaster or a VW bug under a car-cover, just outside her front door. She has grown a green thumb, attacked the ugly plants and created quite lovely gardens, a sun garden in the front (Note the wonderful, sputnik-like plant in the middle, called a euphorbia pinea, that has saucer-shaped leaves that sprout more saucer-shaped leaves, etc., culminating in tiny yellow flowers on long spikes in the spring -- a plant that was orphaned somewhere in her garden center and seems to have been left there just for her to find, since they claim they don't have any)--

--and her shade garden on the side, with the gorgeous blue hydrangeas and now-virgin lillies:











Watching the photo-op are the pack of which she is the undisputed leader. See Kirby Lee, Harvard Charles and Fiona Cuthbert peering out the front door. What a handsome group they are!


Here's to next summer and the blossoming of the lillies. And, by the way, how was that venison burger?