Mom's always been a gardener. Strawberries, asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, peas, and potatoes are usually the standard run during the summer season, and this year she's added pumpkins and several other things to the raised beds and various other planters scattered around the property. There's been plenty of rain, so you'd think things would be doing really well.
Are they? No! Why? Because the local deer population have been sending each other text messages or other mysterious communiques indicating that our yard is the place to hang out this summer and, by the way, there's an all-you-can-eat salad bar. They missed the asparagus, but decided to use the peas as a place to nap. The tomato plants are having their tops nibbled away, and the pumpkins' blossoms are being decimated.
When I was in high school, I was in concert band with several of my classmates. After a concert, one of my friends later told me, she and her parents were just about to turn into their driveway when Margaret chanced to espy a deer among her runner beans.
"John!" she is said to have exclaimed. "Kill it!"
Whereupon her husband undertook to chase the deer with the car and pursued it into the field across the road.
I have yet to catch any deer in the garden, but they certainly do exhibit a marked lack of interest by ambling up and down the driveway and bouncing through the yard. Last week there was even one standing in the middle of a patch of peonies. She stared, I stared; she then turned and walked away without giving any indication she was the least bit concerned that she'd been seen casing the garden.
I now know exactly why Mrs. D--- wishes the deer would jump out of their skins and into her freezer.
3 comments:
LOL! Yum, deer in the freezer! We haven't seen any deer here at our property yet, but we know that they're around.
My grandmother has a horrible time with deer in her yard. Just as you describe. She covers all of her plants that she doesn't want eaten every night with some kind of deer-proof mesh, and since she started that it's cut down significantly on the damage (Sometimes the deer come during the day when the plants are uncovered). She tried to use this deer repellant stuff that was made of blood or some such that is supposed to scare them away when they smell it because they think that there's danger around, but they were completely unfazed by it. Good luck!!
Someone suggested we start peeing in the garden....
Oh goodness!
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