Finding that the garden is a rabbits' salad bar

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

They ate my Jack and the Beanstalk tree. From stem to leafy stem they felled it, devoured it, and made it disappear. Rabbits, I fumed. Bandits and thieves. And other names I cannot repeat.

It wasn't, for the record, a real Jack and the Beanstalk tree. It didn't grow from magic beans overnight and disappear above the clouds into a land of giants. It wasn't even a tree, just a leggy, flowering plant. But it was taller than I am by at least a foot, and to the 3- and 4-year-olds who called it their Jack and the Beanstalk tree, it seemed to reach the sky.

I bought it last summer at a nursery in Braintree. It was a big thing full of fat yellow daisies that bloomed into late fall. The rabbits left it alone then, when it loomed above them. Then a frost came and it shriveled and died. But I said confidently to the two children who wondered where "the giant, giant tree" had gone that it would be back next year, in the spring.

"Next year" and "in the spring" meant nothing to them, and they might have forgotten this tree in all its glory if I hadn't pointed out the beginnings of growth to them. If I hadn't said, in April and May, every time they went into their playhouse: "Look at your tree. See how it's coming up through the dirt. See how it's getting bigger and bigger every day. It's just like you. It grows when I'm not looking!"

Apparently I wasn't looking when the rabbits chose it for their main course, either. The thing is I didn't even suspect the rabbits the first time I noticed that the new growth seemed a bit thinner than it had the day before. It was as straight as a ruler back then, healthy and green. I blamed the rain for its missing limb. There'd been a downpour the night before. The coreopsis was slouched. The loosestrife was bent. Clearly, the Jack and the Beanstalk tree had taken a beating, too.

And then the next day, a clear sunny day with not a raindrop in sight? A second leafy tendril had vanished. The rabbits, at this point in the season, had already snapped the blossoms off my daylilies, munched through my black-eyed Susan, and dined on every morsel of the pricey Caraby clematis I'd planted in front of a cement wall. But I was Zen about it. There's enough to go around, I told myself. Not at first, of course. But then I visited my cousin Jeannie and her husband, Sal, who isn't just a weekend gardener but a real farmer, who grows lettuce and eggplant and garlic and chives and has chickens and ducks and acres of things I see only in grocery stores. Chill, he said. The rabbits have to eat, too. You plant enough, you don't even notice.

So I planted more, Malva this time and Mohican Viburnun. Still, the rabbits preferred the Jack and the Beanstalk tree.

I bought a cage-like fence and placed it around the tree. The rabbits went under it. I bought rabbit food and placed it in a bowl next to the tree. The rabbits went around it. I bought some guaranteed-to-prevent-rabbits netting and placed it on top of the tree. A sparrow, not a rabbit, got caught in it. I freed the bird and took down the netting and gave up the fight.

And then I met the hoodlums. There are two of them, partners in crime. They were gnawing on my one remaining clematis. But they weren't what I expected - oversized, overfed thieves with masks around their eyes. They were baby bunnies, little, teeny, tiny things. Of course I didn't chase them away. I watched them - eat my morning glory, my daisies, my delphinium. And every now and then they looked up and I swear they smiled at me.

When the grandchildren play in the yard now, they do what they always do. They run in and out of their playhouse, blow bubbles, take turns kicking the giant blue ball, push each other around in their small foot-powered car. But they also search for the bunnies. They don't see them every time. The bunnies are not like the Jack and the Beanstalk tree used to be - always there. The bunnies hide.

And Lucy and Adam have to look for them under the dahlias and under the shed or deep in the garden, dining on the flower of the day. It's a new game, Peter Rabbit. Not a game I want to play next year. But it’s a lot more fun, not just for the kids but for me, too, than watching a tree grow.