My Glorious Morning

I planted a bunch of morning glory seeds on the side of our house where we have a fence and little deck. There's a little corner where our St. Francis stands on a rock and watches over the yard. Behind him, which is the place under the deck, we store all our garden tools and various outside toys. It looks pretty cluttered so I wanted the morning glories to grow up behind him and hide all that stuff. Well, as my mom has warned me, morning glories will take over. And boy did they ever. We couldn't even see our St. Francis statue anymore.

I noticed some of the vines looked cut off and I figured Mike was trying to cut them back a little to keep them from taking over the house. But then one morning I went outside to sit on our "adult swing" as the children call it, and read a little bit before the kiddos woke up. The swing is on the other side of the morning glories. As I went to sit down, I noticed more vines cut down. I also knew that Mike had not been outside the evening before and that there was no way he would have gone out to do it before work at 4:30 AM. That's when it struck me. The deer are eating my morning glories! At first, I was angry. I already can't grow my favorite flowers because they are a favorite to the deer: Roses. They also like pansies, a fall time staple. And we have yet to have an apple off of our apple tree in the three years that we have lived in this house because the deer eat them all. They also poop all over our yard and send deer ticks our way. Now my morning glories? I was pretty upset until I looked at out St. Francis statue.
Yes, I could actually look at him again because the deer had eaten the morning glories from around him. In fact, that was pretty much the only spot they had eaten. I then thought about how many times I have seen St. Francis pictured with a deer lying at his feet. And then I could hear Mike's voice in my head telling me the same thing he has said when I have complained about the roses and the pansies and the apples. "The deer need to eat too."

So, I tipped my hat to St. Francis and thought about how it was nice to see him again and sat down to read my book. When the children woke up, I told them what happened and Little Miss Chatterbox said, "Well, the deer need to eat too!" Yes. The deer need to eat too.