Damnit.

Yes, damnit. My neighbor Frank always teases me that he’s going to send his deer herd over to visit my garden. Well they’ve been here.

I woke up this morning and one of them, a very Disneyesque doe I shall call Bambi‘s mother, was making her way through the shade and woodland gardens. Hostas and a Pagoda Dogwood were the main victims.

Bold as brass, she just stood there and looked at me with a hosta leaf dangling from her mouth until I was less than five feet away. Blinking her big brown eyes like the very picture of innocence.

I didn’t have anything other than sticks handy so I started chucking them at her until she moved. Then I let the dog out.

Part of this is my fault. Between all the skin cancer on my face getting removed and more to be removed, and the heat, I haven’t paid enough attention to some things like spraying for deer. Or weeding but that’s another story. Mostly because I have had to stay out of the sun and keep bandages from sweating off of my face.

I usually am alternately and more regularly spraying Deer Out and Plantskydd. I say usually and more regularly because I got complacent and my poor garden turned into the buffet salad bar overnight. Damn it.

The upside is I got to see what was truly deer-proof.

It could have been a lot worse than it was but the deer got some of my most beautiful specimens. She even chomped on one of the Empress Wus.

So now everything is sprayed again. But damn it all. We work so hard on our gardens and it’s munch, munch, munch.

Some say why garden then? Because I love it and when I pay attention and keep my spray schedule usually I am ok.

The deer are also a by-product of the over-development where we live. Every square inch that can be developed is being developed and even if some sites are only taking out scrub woods, they are removing natural habitat like they removed the natural predators of deer years ago.

And sadly the development dwellers don’t often care about the deer problems because most of them don’t garden. Seriously a lot of the home owner associations don’t allow it. It’s done by armies of people the developments employ so nothing much resembling plant life has much of a sense of permanency anyway.

And around here, if it’s not over development, it’s the pipeline companies shoving pipelines through people‘s backyards and gardens. But that’s another story that could be an entire blog site by itself (like Dragonpipe Diary.)

So before it gets too hot I will do a little weeding and try to neaten up what the deer destroyed.

Not so happy gardening this morning.