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- #11
HOSTAS .... they LOVE them .... keep them nibbled to stubs. Four years ago we bought four Japanese Dwarf lilacs and planted them along the back lot line.
(In the deer photo you can see that the back yards abut where there should be an alley. Makes the neighborhood quieter. The house of the neighbor behind me can be seen in the background. It's the bottom of their deck's cedar grid trim that's just barely showing. The deer are standing in the back yard of my neighbor to the west, looking for some of the sour little crab apples that won't fall of the tree until spring to make a mushy mess.)
Back to the lilacs. Everyone we asked said the deer will leave them alone. Well, as soon as it snowed and got cold the deer lowered their standards. After they bit off all the buds, they started to strip off the bark. The shrubs were about two feet high and pencil thickness. In the spring the poor things (the lilacs, not the deer) looked like a cartoon artist's best version of decimation. Strings of bark waving in the breeze from sticks broken and hanging to the ground, barely attached to the upright portion by a frayed end. My wife wanted to give them a chance to come back (the lilacs, not the deer), but the deer came back every time there was a new leaf. I decided they were no longer lilacs but indeed, deer feeders. I pulled them out and sodded the holes.
Everyone in the area tries to plant flowers or shrubs the deer won't eat. Or they put up elaborate fencing or chicken wire. When you look at those yards you see fenceposts, guy wires, and hardware cloth ... not flora.
(In the deer photo you can see that the back yards abut where there should be an alley. Makes the neighborhood quieter. The house of the neighbor behind me can be seen in the background. It's the bottom of their deck's cedar grid trim that's just barely showing. The deer are standing in the back yard of my neighbor to the west, looking for some of the sour little crab apples that won't fall of the tree until spring to make a mushy mess.)
Back to the lilacs. Everyone we asked said the deer will leave them alone. Well, as soon as it snowed and got cold the deer lowered their standards. After they bit off all the buds, they started to strip off the bark. The shrubs were about two feet high and pencil thickness. In the spring the poor things (the lilacs, not the deer) looked like a cartoon artist's best version of decimation. Strings of bark waving in the breeze from sticks broken and hanging to the ground, barely attached to the upright portion by a frayed end. My wife wanted to give them a chance to come back (the lilacs, not the deer), but the deer came back every time there was a new leaf. I decided they were no longer lilacs but indeed, deer feeders. I pulled them out and sodded the holes.
Everyone in the area tries to plant flowers or shrubs the deer won't eat. Or they put up elaborate fencing or chicken wire. When you look at those yards you see fenceposts, guy wires, and hardware cloth ... not flora.
