There comes a point in every Highland garden when the gardener discovers she has mistaken tenancy for ownership. You may have bought the land, paid the solicitor, moved the stones, planted the trees, carried the compost and spent a perfectly good afternoon deciding whether the fuchsia was blocking the light from the verbena. None of this establishes ownership. It merely informs nature that refreshments are available. The deer were the first to make this clear.
In early spring, I had searched everywhere for three old Thurston August apple trees, the hardy sort said to endure winters that would discourage anything with less character. I had them brought up from England, then spent hours choosing their positions, shifting each pot a little to the left and then back again, as though the trees might one day complain about the view. Once planted, they were watered generously, tucked beneath straw and watched with the anxious devotion usually reserved for premature infants. I did everything but kiss them goodnight. I imagined blossom, fruit and, eventually, a pie of such distinction that visitors might speak of it quietly on the way home. The deer had a shorter plan. They ate bark and leaves. By morning my baby trees looked more like hat stands.
I tried netting, string, reflective objects and several devices sold online by people who plainly had never met a Highland deer. Each promised to frighten the animals away. The deer were not frightened. They were mildly interested. A deer will stand twenty feet from a flashing object, consider it carefully, and then return to eating my future pies.
Eventually, I installed web cameras with alarms. This seemed modern and decisive. The moment a deer approached, I would receive an alert, leap from bed, throw on a dressing gown and rush outside to defend the orchard. In my imagination, I was swift and commanding.
In practice, the cameras took photographs. They did not alert me.
Thus, while I slept peacefully, the deer continued their work and the cameras produced a detailed documentary record of my failure. By breakfast I could review the attack from several angles. There was the arrival. There was the first bite. There was the second deer joining in. In one photograph, a deer appeared to look directly into the lens. I felt mocked. There is something particularly insulting about technology that witnesses a crime, records it beautifully and waits for you to notice the evidence.
The spiders are more efficient. A deer requires access. A spider requires only that you place something upright. Put in a pole and a spider appears. Add a chair and there are three. Install a camera and by sunset it has become part of a regional spider transport network.
I do not know where they come from. I suspect they maintain lookout towers. There may not be a spider in sight for weeks, but the moment I add bamboo supports to the heirloom peas, they arrive as though alerted by miniature satellites hovering just above the roofline. Surely they work in teams. One runs the anchor line. Another handles tension. A third checks the prevailing wind. A fourth stands on a leaf with a tiny clipboard and announces that the lavender section is behind schedule.
By morning the whole spider city is finished. On a dewy day, when the light catches the webs correctly, it is difficult not to admire them. Fine silver lines hang between the plants. Tiny droplets shine along every thread. An entire world appears where there was nothing the night before. The engineering is exquisite. The difficulty is that one generally discovers it by walking into it face first.
You cannot win with spiders. They own the corners, the shed, the gap beside the watering can and the path you use most often. Most offensively, they own the best seat on the swinging Adirondack love seat. Nobody sits there now. The web is too large and the spider occupies the centre with such confidence that one feels an appointment may be required.
Mr Gunn occasionally suggests removing it. I point out that this would merely create a vacancy. By evening another spider would move in, probably with dependants.
Recently, while having a bath, I decided to check the garden camera to see how the flowers looked under the moonlight. This sounds luxurious. It was not. Instead of flowers, the screen filled with a spider weaving a web directly across the camera lens.
There are experiences for which a person is not properly prepared.
The spider’s legs filled the screen. Every movement was visible. It worked with terrible concentration, drawing one line after another across the lens. I watched in equal parts fascination and dread. Then flies began arriving. One hovered near the lower edge. Another landed briefly. The spider waited.
I spent the evening checking the camera and then regretting that I had checked the camera. I would put the screen down, tell myself not to look again, and pick it up two minutes later. The fly was still there. The spider was still there. I could not bear the suspense. Eventually, I stopped watching. There are limits to how long one can watch a spider hunt a fly before having an existential crisis.
By morning, the Highland wind had blown the whole arrangement away. The web was gone, the lens was clear and the flowers were still there. I, however, felt I had changed.
Still, deer and spiders at least make themselves known. The hardest battles are against creatures you cannot identify.
For weeks, something had been attacking the garden at night. Pots were overturned. Beetroot was pulled out. Leeks were uprooted. Holes appeared in the flower beds. The damage had the quality of a search. Some creature was looking for something and had decided that my vegetables were concealing it.
Every morning brought fresh evidence. A pot would be on its side. Soil would be scattered across the path. One particularly healthy leek was found several feet from where it had been planted, as though it had tried to leave.
I began to investigate. Perhaps it was a bird. Perhaps a cat. Perhaps a fox. Perhaps some small nocturnal animal known only to wildlife experts and people who have already lost all their onions. I installed another camera. The first camera had failed to identify the culprit. The second camera allowed us to fail from another angle.
Every morning I checked the footage. Nothing. Wind. Rain. A moth. Occasionally, my own dressing gown passing through the frame. I now had four cameras. The creature remained unseen. I moved two cameras to the flower bed, another to the pots and another towards the path. The result was an increasingly sophisticated surveillance system recording absolutely nothing of value.
Mr Gunn would ask whether we had caught it.
“No,” I would say, “but we have excellent footage of the weeds that need pulling.”
Then one evening, after the curtains had been closed, there was a sound outside. Not a loud sound. A purposeful sound. Mr Gunn opened the curtains quickly.
There it was.
A pine marten had poked its head up from beside the giant pumpkin pot.
For a moment, none of us moved. It looked like a sea otter that had been blown inland during the last storm. Its face was round, its eyes were enormous and its expression suggested that we were interrupting something.
We stared at it. It stared at us.
There are animals one expects to see in a Highland garden. Birds. Deer. Rabbits. The occasional frog, even lizards. A pine marten feels different. It belongs in wildlife documentaries, moving silently through misty woodland while a solemn voice says, “Rarely seen by human eyes.”
This one was clearly considering climbing into my pumpkin pot. My hopes of American pumpkin pies flashed before my eyes.
But for several seconds, the moment was magical. Here was a beautiful, shy, elusive creature, one of the Highlands’ most secretive animals, looking directly at us from among the vegetables.
I looked down at the camera screen in my hand. The camera could barely see it. It wasn’t even recording. The pine marten had repositioned itself outside the camera’s view. It was not elusive at all. It understood surveillance.
Then it appeared to remember that this was its garden. It crossed the stones with the relaxed confidence of an owner inspecting premises. There was no panic and no attempt to flee. It moved with the quiet authority of someone checking work done by unreliable staff.
Then it climbed into the onion pot and began pulling everything out.
Not one onion escaped. Some were lifted. Some were tossed aside. Some were examined briefly. Mr Gunn and I stood at the window watching our produce being reorganised by management.
Having completed its inspection, the pine marten hopped onto the sheep wall, slipped behind the trees and disappeared into the night.
Weeks of surveillance, rearranged cameras, disturbed sleep and speculative discussion had finally produced an answer. The unknown creature had been identified. The elusive, shy, beautiful, almost mythical pine marten was, in fact, a little shite.
And so the garden remains under divided rule. The deer continue to contest the apple trees. The spiders have secured the furniture. The pine marten has taken the pots. The wind retains everything else.
I have the cameras.
They have yet to prove useful.
