Like a Deer in the Yardlights

I don't eat wild game of any kind. I am not a hunter. My father used to hunt game for food. My husband was a hunter in his youth, to put meat on his family's dinner table. I don't eat wild game; just never could get past the childhood trauma of Bambi. There are lots of others out there like me. You know who you are.

Last night before closing up the garden gate, I seriously considered lowering the shower curtains attached to the bunk bed frame in the garden boat just in case some creature decided to visit. "Naw", I told myself "you'll just have to get up at 6am to put the curtains back up so you don't fry your garden in the heat." I am NOT an early morning person. "Besides, it's too early in the life of your garden to be worried yet, no peas, no tomatoes to eat".

If you have seen the photo's of my garden boat, you know that since the heat arrived here in the Valley July 1st, my garden has exploded. It is lush and green and vibrant with life. Roses blooming, squash blossoms, startlingly orange Calendulas, Geraniums just getting ready to burst into brilliant reds, yellow tomato blossoms everywhere, and, oh look there, the peas are starting to bloom!!!

My best friend Bente is a Dane. She loves green peas in the pod fresh from the vine. Each time she visits, we walk out to the garden boat and she checks the progress of the pea plants. "If you come out here someday, and your peas are missing, don't look at me" she jokes. We oooh and aaaw over how well the garden is doing, dream longingly of the day we can walk out and pick tomatoes and peas. How can I tell her.....

Before breakfast today, I made my morning pilgrimage to the garden boat. On the way, I looked at all my plants-in-pots that I have placed along the inside of the fence. The cute little Island Mule Deer made such a feast of my potted plants outside the fence last year that I moved them all inside the yard. There is probably about 75 to 100 large black florist pots with various veggies, herbs and flowers. As I passed by my pretty and highly scented pink rose-in-a-pot, I blinked. Twice. All the leaves, flowers and flower buds but one were gone. Hmmmmm. Well, it was right up against the fence, and the openings in the fence are roughly 3" x 6". I suppose a cute little Island Mule Deer muzzle could reach through but....hmmmmm.

I moved on down the line. Several pots away another rose, this one a fragrant, creamy white with the faintest hint of pink at the edge, was missing it's 3 blossoms. HMMMMMM! Now I am afraid to look. Afraid to turn and face my garden boat. I had seen from the gate that things in the boat looked normal, but up close? And personal? Oh, deer!

Did I mention that last year the cute little Island Mule Deer ate a lot of my plants-in-pots that were outside the fence? Or that one of their absolute favorite things was my Scarlet Runner Beans growing up the outside of that fence? And didn't I mention before how much they thoroughly enjoyed Richard's Soup Bean Mix Garden? How they munched it down to dust? Sigh...

So here is the GoodNews/BadNews part. The GoodNews is they didn't eat all the tomatoes. Nor all the flowers or herbs or onions. Missed the zucchini, the corn, the cucumber, the parsley, the chives, the marigolds...well you get the picture. The BadNews part: they picked those Scarlet Runner beans clean down to the stems. Nibbled on the tomatoes, LOVED THE PEAS, tried an onion or two, enjoyed the jalapeno peppers, munched up the soup mix beans and ate the geraniums in the bow of the boat down to almost nothing! Oh there are still about half the pea vines growing, in the middle of the boat where he - I know it was that cute little Island Buck Mule Deer who has been hanging around - couldn't quite reach...yet.

So after Richard gets home from work today, we are extending the fence upwards, then hanging old cd's from this extension as a deterrant (Can't you just picture the deer in the dark: "oh look, a Garth Brooks CD! I love Garth Brooks! And an old copy of Greeting Card Maker. Now you can make your mom a card.") Well, one of the gardening sites online swears that hanging cd's will keep them out of the yard.

Richard says that buck is going to look really nice in our freezer this fall. I don't think so. I don't eat wild game. I am not a hunter. Still, I have to be honest here...I think I am getting over my Bambi trauma. And how am I going to tell Bente about the peas?

A Muttering Murder of Crows

A family of crows fledged their babies recently. They are a loud and raucous lot. And curious. Very, very curious. I hear them across the creek or the field when I am in the garden. And I wait....

Soon they will be in the big pear tree on the South side of the yard. They like to watch what I am doing, but I hadn't figured out quite why, at first.

When they are across the creek, they caw loudly, swooping and diving and chasing one another while they hunt, putting me in mind of teenage boys laughing, teasing and shoving each other down the street. But when they spot me in the garden, they fly over to the pear tree and sit there muttering softly to each other. Soon one or two will lift off and glide to the King apple tree above where I am working. And they watch. And they wait. After a while I hear one or two calling from the pear tree, as if asking what the others see me doing.

Of course I talk to them and I tell them to just never mind casing my garden. You see, I figured it out, what they were up to, and I don't trust them. They are fun to watch; fun to listen to. There is one who barks like a dog - I have dogs; more on that in another post. But back to the crows in the apple tree. I think - no, I KNOW, they are monitoring the vegetables growing in my boat garden, waiting for that first, fat, juicy, red or yellow heritage tomato to ripen. Or that first crisp, green heritage pea. And when I least expect them to, they will swoop in and steal them. I have their number. They are watching the progress of the garden and reporting it to their siblings. Letting them know how many days until pea pickin' time.

But I have a plan, see. It goes back to the bunk bed frame and the plastic shower curtains - my cute little Island Mule Deer deterrent. Which is now also my cute little Murder of Crows deterrent. I think. I hope it doesn't just turn into a cute little Murder of Crows perch for eating heritage tomatoes and peas. Hmmmmm, maybe I need to rethink this. I'll keep you posted.

We're talkin' ship here!

It's summer here in the Valley...finally. I'm a gardener. That is, I love to watch things grow. It has always amazed me that from such tiny seeds, something will grow so tall - like corn or a tomato plant. I love to do other things too, like create my own recipes for baking and cooking, untangle the mystery that is a computer, read. But right now, I AM A GARDENER.

As many people do, we have a problem with deer - those cute little Island Mule Deer. And rabbits - those cute little Island Bush Bunnies. They live to eat your garden, if you let them, so I spend half my time thinking up ways to defeat them. This year, I think I have done it...at least so far. It all started with a boat.

Not just any boat, mind you, but a boat that sat upside down in the yard for about 17 years. It is about 16 feet long by 6 feet across at it's widest point. And it has become MY GARDEN. My Ultimate Raised Bed Garden. My plant-everything-you-can-think-of-in-it-and-see-what-grows Ultimate Raised Bed Garden.

Now please understand, we live on 160+ acres of land, of which we have about 20 acres for our own use. Every spring a neighbor comes down with his tractor and plows up our garden spot south of the house. Every spring my husband, Richard, goes out and plants his "18 Bean Soup Mix" Garden. And every spring, after the 18 Beans from the Soup Mix are growing thick and lush, the cute little Island Mule Deer, and the cute little Island Bush Bunnies, eat his Soup Mix garden down to the dirt. Yes, you're right, he DOES have a short memory. But I digress...

The Boat. My husband got it in a long-forgotten trade years ago and as I said, it sat upside down in the yard surrounded by weeds. Until this spring. That's when I got an idea to use is as The Ultimate Raised Bed. Using the tractor, Richard dragged it into the fenced yard on the east side of the house, under the King apple tree, facing Mount Arrowsmith and the morning sun. Then, after he filled with dirt, and some well rotted cow poop, I set out to create my masterpiece.

My goal was to plant as much as possible in that space, and plant it I did: several Heritage Tomatoes, yellow Corn, Alaska Peas, red and white Onions, a Bush Cucumber, Eggplant, some beans I picked out of Richard's Soup Mix, Scarlet Runner Beans, Jalapeno Peppers, a watermelon, good old green Zucchini, Chives, Lemon Thyme, Orange Thyme, Purple Sage, mixed Sweet Peas, pink Lavatera, a sweet scented yellow-orange miniature Rose, pink & purple double Petunias, bright red Geraniums, fragrant Pineapple Sage, blue Beebalm, Summer Savory, Feverfew, Gladiolus, tiny white Snowland Chrysanthemum, bright yellow Osteospermum, orange Calendula, bronze Marigolds, white Echinacea, yellow Agyranthemum...and nothing grew, nothing moved, for weeks.

Spring, which usually arrives here on the Island at the end of February or beginning of March, never did arrive. I planted my garden - finally - at the end of May and it suffered through cold, wet, nasty weather until the end of June. It languished, and so did I, sigh.

Then summer arrived with a vengence. My garden woke up and started to flourish. Tomatoes that never grew a half inch suddenly were growing inches. I had given up on my scarlet runner beans germinating and one day they were a foot tall! My Lincoln peas didn't germinate - and peas like it cold. My Alaska peas grew like crazy. Wow! Vitamin D really does work! Suddenly everything in the yard is lush, and vibrant.

But back to those cute little Island Mule Deer and those cute little Island Bush Bunnies. I think because my Boat Garden is 3 feet tall, that it is safe, relatively speaking, from the bunnies. And I think it's safe from the deer. The fence is 3.5 to 4 feet tall. But....deer can jump 7 feet - straight up and over. So, we have this metal bunkbed frame that Richard put in the boat, over top of the peas and tomatoes. And I have attached plastic shower curtains to it, to act as a deterrent in the unlikely event...ok, in the likely event that those cute little Island Mule Deer decide the lure of fresh heritage tomatoes & peas is too much to resist. I'll let you know how we do.

So, Richard, about that old bathtub sitting out by the well house....