12 Feb 01

Saturday morning was warm and delightful, so Mama and I went out into the garden. I had been expecting some crocus noses in the south garden, but when none showed up, I was dismayed. Some agressive digging around revealed a nasty fact: they had been eaten by voles. I lost literally hundreds of crocuses bulbs in the south gardens. Mama and I searched and found a few stray green crocus leaves-- between fifteen and twenty bulbs all told. There may be a few that just haven't come up yet. I was very, very bummed. We had lunch outside by the one blooming snowdrop while the menfolk went to Home Depot.

13 Feb. 01

In terms of the information, I'm sure the people at Jackson & Perkins mean well... but... maybe their horticulturalists have never met our South County deer, or, nobody has told our South County pests that they're not supposed to like that stuff. Much of what I see on the list as "deer resistant" that I have, our local antelope devour with gusto. Liatris?? Yum. ANEMONE??? Bambi candy. They love Foxglove; nobody has told them it's poisonous. Echinacia?? What the Munching Bambi hath left, the Japanese Beetle hath devoured. I ripped out all my echinacea plants in a fit of despair.

Oh, well. Maybe they reserched with mule deer, or something.

My list of truly deer resistant flowers is pretty (doggoned) small: Feverfew, Rose Campion, Daffodils, Daisies in bloom; but the plants are fair game all winter long, Iris likewise, Dianthus, depending on what else is avaliable, Bleeding Heart-- what you're left with after bambi does lunch.

02 March 2001

A walk in the garden
a pot of tea
a movie
or all three
sounds good to me

Looking forward to daffodil season since Crocus season is a bust; drat those voles. When the daffodils bloom we'll have a walk thru the garden. In the meantime pots of tea will be important, although the snowdrops and witchHazels are doing well.

March 22

The winter has been colder than usual, and I had no crocuses blooming the second week of February as I have come to expect. Nor the third week either. The first Crocus bloom has come an entire month later than I had expected.

The witchHazels are really enjoyable this year. I fed and gently mulched them last year (composted manure, ashes, lime-- neither are recommended unless your soil is pH 5 like mine-- and a few shakes of slow-release granules.) It was an important lesson-- Feed Us. Like the lilacs, they are ever so much happier with cozy, mulched-in-compost feet and a few nutrients.

Yellow Arnold's Promise had crocuses under it, but the voles got a large percentage of them. Orange Jelina is underplanted with snowdrops, and it works well this year. The voles seem to have left all the snowdrops alone.

The same cannot be said for crocuses or tulips, and one wonders about the lilies. Soon the mailman will bring one of those underground noisemakers. We'll see if it drives away the little tunnellers. If not, then this fall all the new replacement crocuses will be planted in underground cages. It's debatable whether I'll replace the tulips or not. Until the place is fenced against Bambi there's really not much point.

Flats of seedlings under lights contain night-blooming phlox (Zaluzianskaya), white star zinnias (loved them last year), white dahlias, lemon gem marigolds, petunias. And yellow violas; the directions said keep them cold and dark, so they went outside a week or so, and then came in, and I put them in the dark and promptly forgot all about them. Oooops. They are very leggy. We'll see how they do.

There is also half a flat of tomatoes doing well. Soon it will be time to start the Four-O'Clocks, the Moonflowers, and the morning glories. This year the vines finally have something to climb... I bought el-dirt-cheapo arches at the local El Dirt Cheapo store and I don't care if they rust. They'll still look better than teepees of bamboo stakes that eventually fall over anyway.

Anticipation is keen. Close by the house, much happier now that they are regularly getting mulched and fed, the lilacs are covered with buds. There are asters aplenty, which will be wrapped with black mesh this year in the hopes that I can keep a few blooms... Likewise the mums, if they survive the months of March and April (always the hardest part of the year for them.) Daffodil noses are pushing thru the soil, and the surviving crocuses and tulips are poking up in the colder areas. The pansies planted in the fall have already put out a few blooms. The surviving Winter Aconytes have gently begun to multiply.

Church will take up plenty of my spare time this year, but I am still hoping to find some time out in the sun and wind. The first priority is to remove an oak stump from the Angel Garden and replace it with the Sweet Autumn Clematis that doesn't look right in the front of the garden. (So why did I plant it there? -- that was my very best soil, and I really wanted it to live and thrive. It did. The trick will be to move all the soil with the root system. Perhaps if I tip the wheelbarrow on its side and lever the entire rootsystem gently in...) The second priority is to obtain and spread large quantities of composted manure onto many needy places in the garden. Especially those lilacs and witchHazels!

Time will tell which is stronger: forsythia, Gooseneck Loosestrife, or Obedient plant. Last year I planted a row of young Forsythia down the middle of the UnKillables Bed (also known as The Survival Of The Fittest bed). They don't seem to have done much, so I am hoping that they were busy sending down roots? I hope that the forsythia wins, and the gooseneck comes in second. The obedient plant may be mostly ripped out. Bambi eats it; why encumbreth it the ground??

Speaking of Bambi, the other thing that he ate last year was the autumn Japanese Anemones. They were drenched in anti-bambi spray. No matter. I wonder if the only way to save them is to tie my dog beside them all summer. She'll need a nice soft bed, otherwise she'll sleep on the anemones... fence, I want a fence...

Once upon a time I had a large row of purple iris. The combination of iris and daisies is a favorite, and so they were always planted together; but all winter long, Bambi ate the daisies-- and trampled the irises to get to them. I started with a very long row of irises; when Bambi was done trampling, I ended up with a couple of clumps.

Most of the daisies got moved to the South Path. Bambi can eath them there all winter long if he wants to; they come back fairly well in the summer anyway, and they glow in the moonlight. But the refugee irises are scatterd thinly here and there. They need excellent drainage and good sun. I'd like to have an Iris Row again.

Perhaps this Saturday I can rake away all those oak leaves from the South Path. They're covering the daffodils and the daisies and whatever else is still there that I've forgotten about. And perhaps this would be a good time to rescue the rest of the plants in the Oval Garden that I missed last fall when I ripped it all out. There are daffodils, minor bulbs, and feverfew in abundance. Since Feverfew is one of the few plants that Bambi will not touch, I should plant hedges of them.

24 May 2000

I haven't paid any attention to my mailbox garden this year. Poor mailbox. Cosmos sounds good, though. And morning glories. I did start some Lemon Gem marigolds that will go there. But first... the weeds have to go. Sigh.

The whole frontyard wooded area (laurel grove), except for the laurels, is not doing well; anyplace directly under oak trees is just kinda doomed...

I have no volunteer bachelor buttons this year... I had ONE, but I had to remove it, and I dumped it into a pot thinking it could survive anything, and it died in the sun and the drought. I have seeds for them but nowhere to put them? I had one section where there are lots of Cosmos volunteers, and I have had to be VERY careful of them, but they are doing fine.

Along the south side of the house, I will have lots of white (feverfew) and soft blue (love-in-a-mist) and I think I will add some red (rose campion) for a patriotic touch. Last year I got that same effect in the angel garden with feverfew, rose campion, and blue spiderwort, and I just loved it. HOpefully that happens again, just before the height of the summer... usually july.... however, the heat and drought made the feverfew bud already! I may have to deadhead them to keep them going long enough for the others to catch up?

The Angel garden looks good and the new south garden looks really good. The lilacs have been wonderful. The first peony bud will pop anytime soon. The bleeding hearts are past peak. Daisy season is almost here, but the drought was hard on the daisies too... they are short and small...

June 22

The garden is stunning, perhaps at its best, with clouds of white feverfew intermixed with the maroonish red discs and grey, fuzzy foliage of Rose Campion; every morning the Spiderwort displays trangular dark blue flowers, making the overall imprassion quite patriotic. There is one white poppy and one blue harebell, both blooming their little hearts out (bless 'em.) There are still lots of leftover daisies, and the young annuals are hesitatly starting to put out their first few flowers. This is one of my favorite seasons.

Every season, says my husband, is your favorite season. Well, says I, the goal is to have lots of favorite seasons. Crocus season, daffodil season, Bleeding-Heart season, daisy season, feverfew-and-Rose-Campion season. Then the heat of summer hits, and things get just a little grim... Sigh. Aside from the Daylilies (which my husband likes) and the Goosenecks (which my husband does not, but I LOVE) things are dry and sad, and the beetles come and feast, drat them, and one despairs of a rebirth because of the gloom, and eats copious amounts of popsicles and ice cream. Indoors.

But when the cool August nights come, then-- Ah! Then-- the cosmos burst into full rose-red, pink, and white glory, waving untidily in the wind, and the rest of the annuals are at peak too. By late September, the Asters and the Crysanthemums catch up and join in with more untidy clouds of purple, rose, and pink, white, and some yellow and maroon too; the starry pink Boltonias blow in the cool wind, and flop all over the place if you don't stake them; and the magnificent Sweet Autumn Clematis is covered with white blossoms and the bees are beside themselves with delight. The Butterfly Bushes are churning out waves of racemes in purple or pink; the cheery sunflowers lean crazily in all directions, and the Morning Glory vines knock over their supports and bloom anyway, and the garden becomes untidily, chaotically, gloriously RIOTOUS with color.

Er-- that is-- if you have successfully, vigilantly defended it from the marauding and maleficent, insatiable and irreligious Bambi and his gang.

Otherwise-- instead of a blowsy pastel-and-purple paradise, it is a dreary, untidy chewed-up and devoured mess.

All this makes me nervous. I must rally my defenses! Perhaps I can purchase a really large, really hungry herd of coyotes.

June 28, 01

I took a few minutes this morning to prune some of my aster plants and stake up the ones that I didn't want to prune that had flopped over. There is more to do when I get home tonight. I have also pinched / cut back several mums (a few that you had given me!) and gave them a shake or two of Osmocote. I also fertilised the cosmos and the Boltonias (they wish they had more sun.) Here's hoping for a spectacular fall garden!

Right now my garden is all Feverfew and Rose Campion, and then a few other things-- one or two Bellflowers, a poppy, some Love-in-a-Puff (Nigella), and a few straggly petunias. Down the hill the Buttlerfly flower is starting to come out (white, and pink) and there are one or two blackeyed susans. In another week or so, the daylilies will start in earnest, and then the goosenecks will come out.

July 03, 2001

Our neighborhood has gained something new: cute, adorable, wild little bunnies. Oooooo, how cute. (Kill them before they find my lilies!!) Actually, I think the Bambi spray combined with the open windows in the dog's room will hold them off, but time will tell. The other thing is that for some reason, wild bunnies often cannot (or do not) jump up into raised beds. Go figure.

For a year, the bunnies devoured every tulip that I had. I planted them in "raised" beds-- and I mean raised only about six inches-- and the damage stopped.

July 18, 01

This morning as I went thru the lower garden, I could see that Bambi had been there. The forsythias and the rose of sharon (the little one) took a beating. And I saw another (skinny, hungry- looking) deer on the way to work. (My asters!!!! My chrysanthemums!!!!) So on my way past Agway I stopped in and bought a bottle of deer spray (I was out) and a large package (14x75 ft) of anti-deer mesh. Combining that with the rest of the mesh that my neighbor gave me (I think it is the same stuff) I should be able to cover all of my gardens that have asters and mums in them, including the lower Lilac garden (not the forsytha path), and keep the marauding antelopes (large and small) at bay.

The mesh package shows the mesh being used as covers and also as fencing. I wonder how feasible it really is to use it as fencing. It's a lot finer than the other stuff I had looked into. I doubt it would hold a panicking buck.

I need to cover the gardens tonight before I go to bed! I remember this happening last year; no Bambi for most of the spring and early summer, and then.... CHOMP CHOMP, ALL GONE. Argh! So it is time to cover the asters and the mums.

Another thing I am excited about is that having the gardens covered in the fall will make leaf cleanup much easier in the gardens. Peel off the netting, dump the leaves, and put the netting back on! Wheee!

End-Of-Year Summary, 2001

Am I ever glad for the netting. This fall I had a garden full of asters, mums, cosmos, and petunias, all tangled in the netting and pushing up through it, and waving in the breeze when they could. It was glorious. I thanked God many, many times, for that netting. I even had four plants worth of unmolested anemones. Unmolested, that is, except for the netting! Anemones are supposed to be free, and wave in the wind. "Windflowers." Oh, well. At least they weren't lunch.

It has other interesting possibilities. For one thing, if you keep lifting the netting until the plants are about a foot and a half tall, and then let the plants grow thru the netting, then the stalks are held firmly apart. The netting becomes a fabulous way to escape staking chores.

(To prevent bambi-munching you would want to add a second layer of netting which you would continue to lift and fluff as the plants grew.)

The downside to using netting is, the birds are pretty dumb about it. I have had several sneak UNDERNEATH the netting to find seeds or whatever, and then get stuck. If my cat finds them at that point, they go to birdie heaven. I did manage to free a couple and one I had to cut free (he did not trust me, snipping around his wings and neck, he was way too tangled, but he did go free that day, no strings or mesh attatched.) Other birds were not so lucky. Over the course of one summer I think I lost four birds in netting-related accidents.

That is a number I do not like and hope to improve significantly (zero mortality rate would be highly preferable.) I suspect that, for the south garden (which was the biggest problem, birdwise, having the most seeds and therefore the most temptations) that if I can leave the roof open, and fence it in instead of covering it over, the birds would fly out the top.

Overall, the netting makes such a huge difference in whether I enjoy the garden (and have a garden to enjoy) that I am determined to make it work, and find some safety for the birds.