Life in the garden

 I had noticed that my topiary rose was being very crudely pruned, all the flower heads snipped off.  I was feeling pretty cranky at the gardeners and thinking "What, are they using a hedge trimmer?"

Last night at supper, my son: "Last night I woke up with a nightmare that somebody was trying to get into my room.   Then I found out it was a male deer eating plants and knocking his horns on my window.

Me: Everybody needs to start closing the gate when they come into the house.

Son:  No good; when he finished eating, he jumped over the gate.

Our gate is under an 8-foot garden arch, which means that the deer was doing some precision jumping there.  I'll have to do something -- maybe tie a string with flags at 7' or something.

In which Mother Nature defeats me

 Further conversation with my son:
Me:  I'm going to put up a string of these in the garden arch so the deer won't come in and eat my roses.
Son:  Oh, the deer aren't eating the roses!  Those are the raccoons.  The deer are eating the tall spiky thing outside my window.*

* Turned out to be the lacecap hydrangea.

Why, oh why, must my garden be OUTDOORS and thus have to share the world with its fauna?   Answer:  Because most of the plants I want to grow aren't miniatures.  Also, sunlight.   And walking past them on the way to pick up the mail.

A further conversation about the papel picado balloons banners:
Daughter:  Oh, those are gorgeous!  .... And they'll probably piss off the neighbors!
Me:  ... I might have  had that in mind.

(The neighbors accused us of lowering their property values when we painted our house bright blue.   They interrupted us during dinner to complain, said the same things over and over, and my husband actually had to be brusque in order to close the door.)