Vandals in the garden

My wife pulled the plug on our garden Monday morning. When I went out to the car at lunch, I saw that the last vines of the tomato plants were gone, the sunflower stalks were down, and the marigolds have been pulled up.

All that's left now are the rhubarb and the asparagus. Those are perennials. But the first killing frost of the season early Sunday morning took care of everything else.

It was 25F (-4C) when I got up that morning. A thick layer of frost lay on everything exposed outdoors. The sunflowers stood tall on Saturday. Sunday, their heads were drooping. They got zapped.

But even though they stood tall Saturday, they looked pretty sad. Garden vandals had struck just a day or two earlier. After they left, the stalks looked as if mad loggers had attacked them, with a hack and a whack and a slash. Where big leaves had absorbed the sun's heat a few days ago, only stumpy stalks remained. The unopened flowers at the very top of the stalks still were there. But where had all the leaves gone?

Look at the aftermath ...



And look at this one ...



Despite the raids, the sunflowers that survived looked pretty healthy ...



... but that was the day before the killing frost.

What pointless vandalism! Why would someone just come along and cut all the leaves off the plant? What a heartless thing to do! Who could be so thoughtless and cruel and destructive?

Who would do such a thing?

I've got my suspicions, and they all center on this wandering nogoodnik and his pals, who have been casing out our neighborhood lately.

Yes, them ...



Look familiar? Our garden is just out of the frame, to the right.

The deer have been a headache on and off over the years. So have the bunny rabbits. But bunny rabbits can't reach very high.

My wife is a very amateur gardener, but this year she got more serious about it. She cleared out an area of our lawn. She planted rhubarb. She planted asparagus. She planted tomatoes. She planted sunflowers. And to help repel area critters, she planted some marigolds. When I suggested getting some spray-on repellent that is advertised on TV, she said the marigolds would repel the critters.

She placed a plastic border around the garden, and all summer I made sure the lawnmower would not create havoc. All was well until very early in August, when the vandals paid us their first visit (marigolds or no marigolds).

The next morning we went outside, and this is what we saw ...



The rest of the garden looked fine ...



See that big sunflower at the far end, behind the rhubarb? It was growing quickly, and it kept growing. Fact is, we had a nice summer, with warm weather, warm nights and above average rain. Area gardens had a very good year. Even ours.

The sunflowers attacked by the deer proved to be resilient, and they picked up where they left off. They grew and grew. This is how they looked on Sept. 1 ...



All the sunflowers were growing great guns ...



That tall sunflower? It had grown taller than my wife! It was as tall as me! Until, that is, the night of Aug. 31, when some strong thunderstorms blew through the western U.P., with thunder, lightning, wind and heavy rain.

When we came out the next morning, our tall sunflower was lying on its side. It had been broken off an inch or so above ground level by the wind. We held up the wilting plant late that morning, and my wife stood next to it one final time ...



A tragedy, sure, but our neighbor on the other side of the alley got it far worse. He had a huge maple tree growing in his back yard. For years. For decades. Then the storm blew through. The next morning, it looked like this ...



The wind broke off about half the maple and pushed it onto his garage. And the neighbor's garage. The next day, they did the only thing they could do ...



I love big maples. So this was a sad day for more reasons than the sunflower.