Oh Deer Oh Deer

When we moved into our previous house next door, about ten years ago, we, or rather I (as I am the jardinerie – gardener), immediately started putting in plants to soften the landscape of what was otherwise a neglected former holiday home. The garden centres did a roaring trade as I bought all manner of bushes and trees, most of which turned out to be unsuitable for a sun-drenched, south-facing garden. Even Mediterranean garden books did not help me with the correct choices as they were quite generalistic and probably assumed we all had automatic watering systems. One day forgetting to water the plants and a shrivelled, dried-up mess resulted. It was quite dispiriting but gradually, and after spending more than I care to estimate, I worked out where certain plants should be placed and greenery started to grow and spread in all the right directions. After planting the terraces, I bought the final two pieces of the horticultural jigsaw for the front of the house – two large terracotta pots with magnificent hydrangeas in them. I looked at them from the upper terraces before I finished for the night, happy with the final part of what had been six months hard work.

The next morning, as I went to the garage I passed my hydrangeas and gave them another admiring glance. Quel horreur – there were just two mangled stumps. Every leaf and flower had gone. J immediately stated that the culprits were deer. They roam wild in the hills behind our house and although you rarely see them, the hunters wouldn’t spend so much time shooting up there if it wasn’t worth their while. I was pretty annoyed, more with the wasted expenditure than anything else but reckoned it was a small price to pay to live in an area where you get deer coming to the front door – at 2am!

Ten years pass without any more of my plants being used as sustenance and then this year, I embarked on a major gardening exercise for the new house. A couple of thousand euros worth of bushes and trees in an attempt to turn a new modern, provencal style house into something more Mediterranean with Cyprus and Mimosa trees, Oleanders and various all-year flowering bushes. Work done, I looked forward to next summer when the greenery would have established itself and the scars of last year’s building works would be well hidden.

And then this morning, I looked out of my office window and couldn’t see the mimosa tree I had planted on the second terrace. It had gone. I just couldn’t understand it. I went to investigate and there was the tell-tale sign of a deer taking a liking to the bark of my tree. Branches and leaves had been ripped off systematically and discarded and then the bark had been stripped off almost as if the creature had used a giant potato peeler. That was bad enough but as I wandered back across the parking area I came across my favourite, and most expensive by a mile, Cyprus tree, totally shredded in the middle of it’s trunk. I was livid for all of about ten minutes until I remembered coming across a couple of deer in the lane a few months ago, totally magnificent as they looked at me for a few seconds before charging off into the undergrowth and back up into the hills.

They were living here long before I was – it’s their place – not mine.