By the time this reaches the news stands we will have the news of the damage done in Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa. As I write on Tuesday, it just made landfall as a Category 5. The amount of predicated rain and wind is impossible to imagine. It shames me that I ever complain about the weather (or anything, for that matter). Nevertheless, I will whine anyway.

My beautiful stand of Clara Curtis Garden Mums has been visited by deer for the first time. They delicately ate every flower without any damage to the leaves. They amaze me. They wrap their little lips around roses and holly leaves.  Allow me to digress — Marissa Tomei gives the best impression of deer lips ever in my favorite movie, My Cousin Vinny.

Recently on a job site, we dug all the hostas and daylilies with a declaration of UNCLE. Weekly spraying of Bobbex has stopped working. I think deer view it as a condiment. One large resistant plant is tansy. It makes an attractive yellow flower late summer. It looks especially nice in a stand of ornamental grass. Speaking of which, I am going to talk my usual smack about them. They are over used, look ghastly in late fall, require serious cutting back soon and are highly flammable. Think twice before planting near your house.

So far, the marigolds have escaped predation. In the seventies, I had a donkey. He was a “government burro” so-called because he was captured in Death Valley. He was one of many wild burros probably set free by the gold miners back in the day. They were wreaking havoc in the National Park.

Probably slated for dog food, I adopted him (a sucker born every minute). He often escaped and headed straight for marigolds. One Sunday early morning, then Tisbury selectman Craig Kingsbury caught him and brought him right into my kitchen as an alarming wake-up call.

Forgive my wandering writing this week. I fear it’s reflecting my state of mind. The change of seasons is revealing my ever-growing “to do” list. I need to prepare beds to receive garlic, drain and put away hoses, get a good supply of wood under cover and think about the approaching dispatching of pigs and chickens, These are first-world problems.

Being the same age as Donald Trump, I’m overwhelmed by these upcoming tasks. Therefore it’s hard to fathom how he plans to continue to destroy our country. The metaphor this past week has been the photos of backhoes destroying the East Wing of the White House. I would need to go through all sorts of permits with the town to build a tool shed — never mind an enormous gilded dancing room that seriously no one wanted.

The history that was cast aside into dumpsters is too appalling to contemplate. Eleanor Roosevelt worked out of the East Room. Jackie Kennedy probably planned the now ruined Rose Garden — Betty Ford, Barbara and Laura Bush, oh yeah and Hillary Clinton — all that history gone so more tacky gold can match his Oval Office remodel.