The recent view from the living room window included a young buck deer who decided to join us for breakfast.  A frequent visitor, he seemed not to notice he was getting his picture taken.  We have an abundance of deer year ’round and until we completed a taller fence this past summer, they munched on the bushes, flowers, and trees in the yard.  Forget geraniums, petunias, tulips, pansies and all the usual floral displays in your landscape. If it has a flower, they will eat it.  If they don’t like the flavor of a particular flower or plant, they will jerk it from the ground and leave it lay!

The new fence took some getting used to.  At first the deer managed to jump over the steel gates, which are a foot lower than the top rail of the fence.  One very dark night as I went to lock up the geese and guineas, the backyard came to life with bouncing, leaping deer springing through the air in a panic trying to find their way out.  After a couple whizzed past me too close for comfort, I retreated to the side of the house and waited until the yard was cleared of crazed ungulates crashing into the fence, bouncing back to the ground and crashing again.

We remedied the openings above the gates by stringing a fine wire and hanging CD’s from it to remind taller homo sapiens to duck as they go through.  It didn’t work on my very tall brother, but that is another story.  At any rate, he wasn’t seriously injured.  But I digress.  For now, after a few very bad experiences, the deer have elected to graze outside the fence or along the west side of the house along the creek bottom.  And I became so confident in the new fence that I once again dared to plant tulips and a variety of bulbs last fall.  I cannot wait for spring!

. . . here's looking at you, kid