ARGH!!!!!!!

I am a twat. A total, complete and utter fuckwit.

Why? Let me tell you.

It took me until Wednesday to get someone over here who could help me get the new lilac tree out of its root bound pot. It was a struggle, but we managed it without causing the tree any damage.

I placed it in its laboriously dug hole. The tree was beautiful, its dark purple flowers about to open gloriously. This lilac was indeed a wonderful addition to the property.

Two days later I looked out the window and blinked several times, registering the truth of what I was seeing. Or rather what I was not seeing. The flowers were gone. As were half the leaves.

Oh, for fuck sake.

Yes, that’s right, dear reader. Fucking Bambo had feasted upon my new lilac.

And I couldn’t even blame him – or her. It was entirely my fucking fault. In my total, complete and utter fuckwittery, I had failed to replace the chicken wire cage, thus declaring the deer café open for business.

If I’d just moved to the island and knew no better, I could blame the deer. But I do know better. I just forgot. Absolutely my fault. Shit, shit, shit.

It’s looking so sad I can’t bring myself to take a picture.

Will the tree – can it – survive?

There is hope.

A decade ago, when I returned to the island, I discovered that Mike had allowed the corner of the property I’d fenced in as a garden to become completely overgrown.

Before I could consider planting anything I had to deal with weeds. Whilst doing so, this happened:

“When I make it as far as the area I’d once carved out for flowering shrubs I make an astonishing discovery: hidden in the knee high weeds is what I’m 99% certain is the lilac tree I planted back in the 1990s and it’s still alive! It was four foot high when I left and is now barely one foot tall, but surely it’s my lilac tree? I call across the road to Pat, who’s also taking advantage of this probably brief period of sunshine to do some work on his garden, ask him to come over and give me his opinion on something. Yes, he says, it’s a lilac, although the deer have been at it, nibbling it down from the top. Never mind. It’s alive and that’s what counts. It makes me ridiculously happy that something – anything – from my earlier gardening efforts has survived.”

That poor, deer-nibbled lilac tree is now ten feet tall.

So, yes, there is hope. This, however, in no way diminishes my fuckwittery. Sigh.