I'll be going in a couple weeks, can't wait!
Garden Photos of '09......#2
Cool! Very jealous, Patti. How is your son?
Have fun Deb!
pretty BB!!
Victor the way our driveway is set up ... our property ends on the one side... so all the snow from the driveway goes on top of my beds.... but down by the street the plow doesn't get close enough so Randy does the right thing in his mind .... for the mail man so he doesn't have to get out of the truck... so the huge pile of solid ice that is there now doesn't even get sun... it's all behind a shrub... even with the pic i couldn't make a dent ... going to be seeing those stupid candy canes for a while yet... this is making me hate decorating now
Victor,Thanks, he is great, and now the chief de cuisine at one of the fine dining restaurants in New Orleans. I ate well. Too well. A dear friend emailed me on Thurs. saying that she was going down to visit her kids who are at Tulane and that she had a rented car and a spare bed at a B&B, so I found a last minute cheap ticket and off I went on Friday.
But I forgot my camera. I did so enjoy the weather and all the green. Camellia's and magnolias especially spectacular.
DH and the dogs stayed home. Big news here was that one of our resident deer got hit yesterday by someone and the police came and shot the poor injured thing by the side of the road in front of the house. The DPW came and took the carcass away today. But it won't make much difference. They are eating everything, even my hellebore. It was a doe. Patti
Please don't mention the deer, Patti. Mine are so much worse than ever. I am disgusted. Kudos to your son! Now I know where to go when I visit NO!
I mentioned that the deer were eating my rodies to the lady at well sweep... and she said they are eating her mountain laurel... bad year for all of us
Terrible. Obviously the deer don't read the books.
guess not... stupid deer!!!
I think we are going to have to spray way earlier than normal just to try to stay ahead of their heavy feeding. I am going to cage more stuff this year too. I hate the look, but it is the only way to get some things big enough to have the rabbits and deer not destroy them.
The deer are sometimes not as bad as the rabbits for us. I look at the damage carefully before I blame the deer. Often I see a neat clear cut angled bit and know it was the bunnies. The deer just rip and tear. Major mangles or they just pull up the whole plant and spit it out if it isn't to their liking. I found a whole day lily plant 50 yards away from where it was planted. I would have loved to have seen that deer wandering about the yard with a big DL plant hanging out of it's mouth. It did eat just the fat buds. Patti
My callicarpa has those clear angled cuts that look like they were cut, not chewed. They were pretty far off the ground, so I didn't know what to think, but just this second realized that the snow was a lot higher last week so easy reach for a rabbit.
Sounds like rabbits. I once saw one standing up on it's hind legs on a snow bank in Vt which put it several feet above normal. But it was a nice bunny. it was our neighbors pet that escaped the previous summer. It survived until late spring, then just disappeared. We all tried catching it for months, but it was so happy to be free that we could not woo it into a trap. Patti
I have way too many problems with deer myself. Not a lot of deer, but just a couple can do a lot of damage. I'm planning on putting up deer fencing this year. Don't look forward to all the work that'll entail. Maybe it won't be as bad as I'm thinking it will be. I just have so many other things to do all the time in the gardens that I don't want to have to put in time and effort into putting up fencing. Wish I could just hire someone to do that for me.
Speaking of going on vacations, I will be going to Texas at the end of this month for 10 days with my Dad to visit my DS and nephew, and my Alaskan DS is arriving there the same day and will be staying for about 5 days. I think she lives in Killeen, which I think is zone 8. Anyhow, it will be much warmer than here, that's for sure. I'm hoping the wildflowers will be starting to bloom, especially the bluebonnets.
Karen
I actually use deer fencing for my yorkies... it's a piece of cake to install... the hardest part is pounding in the posts... and if you are installing a gate ... (rocks here are always a problem) sometimes we had to change plans because of boulders ... but other than that we even moved our set up three times since we lived here.. it's not the worst job
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that wouldn't be sad to see a deer leave the neighborhood. This last spring was really hard on them, and gardeners, because the snow stayed almost two months longer in the higher elevations forcing them all down into the lower elevations ( and hence the towns) or face starving. I still didn't like tame, city dwelling, ones eating in the yard, but I have to admit that I almost felt bad for the ones that we coming down off the mountains. Besides, they actually stuck to the things that they should be eating anyhow, the vine maples and other native shrubs.
This message was edited Feb 11, 2009 8:55 PM
Well, that's good to know that the deer fencing is not hard to install, and we don't have rocks in our soil here, so pounding in the posts should be easy enough. What kind of posts do you use? Would they be round or square wooden ones or metal stakes? The fencing has to be 8' high, right? I actually have a lot of trees that the fencing can be attached to, then in the areas that are lacking in trees I can put in posts.
Karen
Mountain laurel is poisonous to horses, too bad that it doesn't work on deer.
This deer is the result of the very late staying snow this past spring, and it's the only deer I've ever let my crews even try to feed. We were working on a project just a short ways in a a trail for a few weeks. after a few days one of the crew members noticed that this same deer kept coming around our crew, but wouldn't come within a few hundred feet. It had a torn ear, so we knew that it was the same one. One day it finally decided to be brave and let one of my crew bring something to it. So now you can see the only deer that I've ever felt sorry for, and why it finally let someone give it some food.
This message was edited Feb 11, 2009 11:50 PM
You have exactly the right idea. We originally attached ours to trees were possible, then we used metal stakes that we already had which worked OK. Some where too short so we wired two of them together to make them long enough, so they looked really crappy. Then we upgraded to 4"x4" wooden posts in some places last summer. Huge visual improvement. We will be upgrading to more wooden posts this year if possible. Our biggest issue is that the rabbits eat holes in the deer fence and attack the garden. The deer now have changed their pattern and have not been in the fenced part for years, or at least we have seen no droppings or deer damage. We have been adding plastic coated rabbit wire to the bottom two feet which seems to be working, plus one foot along the ground and pegged down so they can't do a Peter Rabbit and squeeze under the fence. We originally ran electric wire, but that was a waste. This is a collage of where we have deer fence. Most of which you can't really see as it gets lost which is nice, like behind the bench is all fenced or through the trees. The deer and birds can drink from the stream area as it is not fenced. The little deer are in the front yard which is also not fenced. I leave that to them. They were coming right up onto our deck sometimes and eating from my containers. That was just too rude. Now I have fenced them out of that part too. But I still like seeing them out in the part of the yard that I left to them. The came on the front steps late last summer and ate my caladiums. Good thing it was time to dig and store them. Just helping me out perhaps! Patti
Allison, I'm so glad that you checked out the thread! Good to have other folks over there!
I'm sure glad that I don't have rabbits to contend with.
Mornin RC
Sorry, I was away from the computer for a while. But...Good morning! And good night! :-p
See ya
Victor - can't you put reflector stakes in to guide/warn the plow guy?
The plows just plow over the stakes, especially when the snow is high enough to cover them! DH calls the town every year.
Morning Deb.
The teenagers do "lawn jobs" here and take out the stakes.
Just a winter annoyance we have to put up with
we have both round and sort of flat supports... tapered metal with hooks to hold the fencing on..the round ones hold the gate on... if you are going to spread this a long span might want to have a couple of people to hold the netting while someone attaches it.... ours isn't nearly as high as you need .. (might want to stick with Patti's idea with the wood posts) one could do ours but two is better... we had to buy the mesh with steal in it... my one yorkie chewed through the plastic stuff in the matter of 5 mins.... i was next door talking with the neighbor outside.. and here she comes running at us... but then again she thinks she is a doberman anyway... what is nice about the steal coated with plastic is they made the holes smaller ... she couldn't get her mouth around the pieces
this is the stuff she chewed through
here is our first fix... we had to add another layer of the steel stuff on the top section as well.. she figured out (in a week) how she is standing in this photo that she can chew though the cheap stuff higher up and jump though the hole
edit -- I just looked closer at this photo nothing looks that way now.... esp. the poison ivy up the tree... it was buried in the pachysandra and ditch lilies the former owner had there
This message was edited Feb 12, 2009 7:39 AM
after the work in the yard was done... we put the fence for them in back... the whole fence line toward the street had no grass from them running back and fourth barking at everyone and everything... they are much quieter in the back
I have reflectors along my driveway and will try them out front, but I too believe they will ignore them. Doesn't hurt to try though.
the momma Plectranthus looks like my geranium I brought in... might be hope for it
Onewish1, Why don't you wrap your candy canes up in green ribbon and pretend they are a Shillelagh for St Patrick's Day. If you hate that pile of ice, paint it green too. I am not Irish, but I would think it would be funny. Or just drink a lot of beer every day and you will be oblivious to them and everything else until spring gets here. Patti
ooooohhhhh that's great!!!!!!!!!!!! the neighbors would know i was off my rocker for sure then!!!!
that goes right up there with the astible painting!!!!
I am going to costco today.. going to look for big bundles of ribbon
LOL
And put out some rocks - not real ones, but 'sham' rocks...
SIGH
I'll take a sigh over a groan.
I don't know how we do it, but we set you up all the time. LOL
you guys are good at what you do!!!!
^_^
Your Yorkies are just like my pointer---she chews through the metal fencing, & gets into the neighbors' yard--she doesn't go anywhere---just comes back through the fence, but she does it when I'm not looking---she knows I get p-----ed at her--plus, she'll soon have no teeth! Loved Patti's idea for the canes, & Victor's for the rocks! Our ice piles haven't gone down that much, even with this warm spell. However, our narrow road is looking slightly wider.
Yeah, Victor "rocks".