I knew a very good and capable man, a generation older than me, whose farm in upstate New York had beautiful gardens. When we drove up the driveway to visit him in midsummer, we were guaranteed to find him bent over behind the tall grasses and flowers with a trowel or garden shears.

He was the first person I knew to experiment with sticking bars of soap on stakes to repel deer. I’m not sure how well that worked, but after collecting fallen fruit and putting up chain link fencing around our fruit trees on a sweltering afternoon last week, I resorted to his gimmick and hung Irish Spring on our fruit trees, which one source said might be particularly effective. We’ll see.

The day before, everything had gone well. Then, overnight, a looter stripped the Empire apple tree nearly bare, and in his greed, disfigured several branches. It could have been anyone: squirrel, skunk, raccoon, porcupine. Search online for apple tree looters and the animal kingdom is well represented. (Who doesn’t like apples?) We suspected deer.

The next day, despite the wire fencing, we were still losing apples that were dangling close to the fence, but the damage to the tree was minimal. We hate losing fruit. We are more worried about losing the tree. Keeping it growing is the long-term plan to have enough apples for everyone.

For us amateur gardeners, this is the time of year when we most fear for our crops. It’s not as if we are in abundance. When I checked last night, there were 18 apples left on the tracked tree, probably not enough to last until harvest time – for any of us. Soon, the night’s attention may turn to the nearby Macoun tree, which is thriving and full of fruit.

I remember trying to grow three or four rows of corn in a New York suburb. I learned an important lesson: everyone is watching us. And everyone, it turns out, is a pretty smart gardener who can tell when the vegetables will ripen earliest and juiciest.

When I tried to grow corn, the deer and raccoons were always a day ahead of me. As if to say, tomorrow, kids, we’ll have corn from the garden. Except that the watchful forest dwellers would take most of it that same evening. Since I had no desire to create a large fenced-in area in my suburban garden, I gave up growing corn.

In comparison, we’ve had a good experience growing them here in rural New Hampshire. Maybe there’s so much habitat here that there’s less pressure to raid the raised beds with lettuce, carrots, and whatever. Our vegetables have been left undisturbed for the third year in a row. We’ve been very lucky.

But apples and peaches? Quite different. Everyone knows a delicacy when they see one. If we could get the deer and everyone else to think long-term and let the trees grow beyond the point where tender branches break easily and there is a large amount of fruit left to share, we could live in supreme harmony.

In the meantime, we are negotiating with our dog Huckleberry to give up his place at the foot of our bed and sleep outside at night. Only until October.

Jarvis Coffin writes fiction and essays about country life. He is a retired media and advertising salesman and former chef and owner of New Hampshire’s oldest inn, the Hancock Inn. You can reach him at [email protected] and stay up to date with all his Musings at jarviscoffin.com.