Fawned of Deer

One of the joys of living on a vineyard is the beautiful pastoral landscape.  I live on the outskirts of Sonoma where the roads are still barely paved and I can't vote in city elections. The result is that I have one of the most cherished vistas in 360˚. Everywhere I look there is something to marvel at, during every season.

In the middle of winter, when the vines are dormant and the weather is too nippy for salad days, the crackle and spark of the wood stove are there and I am graced with a frosty landscape on a February morning.  In the spring, everything is at its promise, the peacocks across the street begin their mating calls in March, the grasses are beginning to run rampant in the vineyard rows and the frogs keep their chorus up all night.  It is approaching summer and the last of the very, very late rains seemed to have finally said their goodbyes and now it's just madness. Those same very late rains have pushed the canopy (the green part of the grape vines) way beyond what one would expect at this time of year and the weeds are, well, they just piss me off. 

So today I took out the riding mower to mow. It wasn't two weeks ago that I had done it before and some of these weeds are again nearly the size of a yardstick.  It sometimes takes two or three passes in opposite directions to get them fully cut.  Annoying.  But today I was on the fringe of our fence line and I spotted a fawn about ten yards away, panicking on the other side of our short fence.  You see, we don't have high deer fencing around and they seem to slip in through the back of our property line.  Then I spotted its mother taking a whiz (quite a long, leisurely one) on our side of the fence.  So I stopped the mower. 

What can I say?  I'm a sucker.  Mommy and fawn were separated and I didn't want to add to the chaos with the mower.  It was about a five minute standoff, the fawn scamping about trying to make her way to mom on the wrong side of the fence and finally Momma Doe high-jumped the neighbor's fence and they were reunited.  

Most growers (and gardeners) don't like deer.  I just don't like to kill them.