As a rule, I only blog happy things (typically), which is why I wasn't about to show you these pictures on Friday along with a depressive dirge over my nibbled vegetables. The deer, the DAMN deer, got into the garden Thursday night when I left the gate open (d'oh d'oh D'OH), and came back Friday night, with friends, to chow down.
Green beans, swiss chard, and tomatoes were the hardest hit. The beans will recover-- and really, if those deer just reduced by total yield from twenty gallons to ten, it's hard to feel ire. The Swiss chard I can live with-- it'll grow back, and with zukes, beans, tomatoes, and cukes coming on, it's going to be hard to squeeze greens into our meals for the next month or so. By the time I'm ready for a hot pot of potatoes-and-greens soup in September, the leaves will be back.
The tomatoes are harder to handle. I've been watching clusters like this, above, swell all summer, at times checking them four times a day for any sign of ripeness. A few clusters remain, but mostly the deer nipped the choicest 'maters and scampered away into the terrible night.
See that hole? Yeah. There was a beautiful cluster of tomatoes there on Wednesday, and now it is goooone.
But, this is not designed to be a dirge. Patrick and I woke up early Saturday and made a sojourn to the lumber yard, and came home with $68 worth of 2x2s, screw hooks, and screw eyes. And a $7 roll of fishing line.
Fortifications have taken shape, and I'm pleased to report the deer have not been back. They can jump great heights, but are lacking in depth perception, so a wide fence is more likely to succeed than a tall fence-- and also, I didn't want a tall fence so near the street. Also, fishing line at nose-height weirds them out, I've read, because they can feel it but not see it. The 2x2s are hooked to the base of the fence posts with screw hooks and eyes, and a piece of fishing line connects each one at the top of the posts, and runs all the way around the outer perimeter.
I'm not quite ready to breathe a sigh of relief yet-- they know the bounty of what's inside, now, and any day they could figure out how to leap in. But for now... for now everything is safe.
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2 comments:
Oh those stinky deer! I love to watch them but not if they are getting into the gardens. Looks as if you two did a good job fencing them out.
Make it an electric fence!
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