They were all red yesterday. The bright red bloom of every flower around the base of the tree was gone. Deer. The red fat red flat of unplanted flowers sat in the middle of the bare flowerbed like a loaded charcuterie board for two weeks and was never touched. The minute I put the flowers in the ground and turned my back, the miserable forest hippies had lunch.
The deer never bothered the flowers last summer, not once. I had even come to think they were deer resistant, but they weren’t. It dawned on me that my son kept them away last year with a secret weapon. A repellent stronger than you can buy at the hardware store, cheaper than Irish Spring Soap, or coyote urine. And nothing had to be put on a stick either.
Ian’s happy place was the back porch, spitting distance from a giant oak tree surrounded by scarlet red impatiens, Bizzy Lizzies, whose only job was to bloom and be beautiful. He’d spent hours reading from the rocker, listening to the sounds of the forest, and enjoying the natural sounds of the forest world as they were mad. It was a convenient step from inside the family room where he spent most of the time completing his senior year of college.
He opened the door to the porch to the sea of red flowers, green forest, and bluebirds to reduce high stress remote learning brain freeze. He’d pick up the watering can, let the soothing white noise from the spigot fill the bucket wash over him, and spend a few minutes soaking the petals until they glistened. It soothed him.
The flowers flourished, I had taught him everything he knew about flower tending. I had a notion why the deer didn’t eat his flower salad.
I called him after he graduated from his home confinement.
“Ian, when you were studying from the family room during the pandemic and tended so well to my flowers, did you happen to pee off of the porch and onto the impatiens?” I asked. Moms can ask questions like that to their adult boys.
“Well, duh, Mom,. Why would I go all the way to the bathroom when there was a perfectly good tree right outside the door?” said Ian with his usual amount of love, adoration, and sarcasm in his voice.
Deer repellent, all you need is a boy.
Devonne Brown 
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