I like to think that I have an attractive yard. In spring the flowering crab trees bloom with pink flowers followed quickly there after by the sweet-smelling purple lilacs. While they are blooming, so too are the Lilly of the valley with their own fragrance. Shortly after in mid to late June my hedges turn brilliant white with their own flowers and then the mock orange blossoms bloom and the smells of oranges abound.
While this is taking place, My Day Lillies and Tiger Lillies are growing rapidly and by mid-July their flower blossoms form. We have hundreds of lilies in the yard. The idea of the architect was that lilies would grow and expand year after year and didn’t need any focused care and would provide decades of color.
In early spring the tulips that were planted, disappeared as they shot out of the ground. The blooms on our hostas plants too disappeared one evening. It is disappointing.
I grew up on Third Street one block north of the arena and everything behind us was bush. In all the years that we lived there; we never saw a deer in the area. A fawn was never seen. A doe dropped a beautiful fawn in our back yard and left it for and afternoon knowing we would protect it. It was cute and wobbly on its legs as it nursed from its mother. And I knew that eventually I would hate that young animal.
I put some netting over the day lilies by the garage door to protect the brilliant yellow flowers. I should have done that earlier as the deer had already snapped off the buds on some plants and had completed removed all the buds from the Tiger lilies. Across the front of our home only a few blossoms have survived to bloom while hundreds have been snapped off the stem. All of the pink blossoms that are in our back yard have been eaten.
And Friday evening that doe was showing the fawn the delicate flowers to eat.
I have a raised garden for fresh lettuce, kale, spinach, and beans. I learned the first year that it had to be fenced in to have any chance of success. We put up a lattice for climbing beans and even though it reached eight feet in height the deer could stand on their back feet and almost reach that height to grab the beans on the lawn side of the garden. Our bean crop was limited.
We have a cedar hedge on the north side of the yard and after the plants had grown tall enough not be be covered by snow in winter the deer would attack the greenery. Now we fence the hedge in in winter with netting and stakes. We replace two trees several years ago and the first winter we discovered the deer liked the bark and would gnaw at it. The trunks are now protected with fencing and the trees are doing well.
We are in a battle with the deer as are many others in Fort Frances as we try to protect out plants from those four-legged rodents. They are so accustomed to people that you cannot even chase them out of your yard and away from your plants. They seem to know that they are protected in Fort Frances. They are a nuisance.
