I MAY HAVE TO REVERT TO PLASTIC FLOWERS

 This gardening year has been particularly annoying with the herd of deers in our neighborhood. They've been raiding everyone's gardens. If they continue, I'll have to either buy plastic flowers or get a big dog. lol... As if this wasn't annoying enough, the gophers have joined in the garden raids too.  I know deers don't like daylilies and that's a good thing as they have started blooming now. I have plenty of those.

My son Vaughan, installed an electric fence for the veggie garden and it keeps the deers away but the gophers seem to have figured a way to get in and have been decimating my beans. For a while, they had stopped entering the veggie garden but lately,  they've brought in their family and friends.

Sorry, Blogger uploaded my pictures backward, so bear with me. 

By the back deck, I used to mow a steep slope but I can no longer mow it so I decided to turn it into another garden. Do I need another garden. NO... but I no longer need to mow that steep area. I think my lawnmower is heavier or I'm getting weaker, or maybe both. I planted 8  Oriental Lilies that were on special.

The deers have clipped the tops of a few already.

Surprisingly, they have left my YAYA Carrots alone in the raised bed. They are big enough to eat and so tasty.

The deers have eaten the first whole row of pickling onions. Only a few survived that feast.

My son installed an electric fence with 4 wires and the bottom one is quite low.  This is a later crop of beans that have just sprouted. On the right bottom of the picture, two dill plants have been eaten and have survived, and are starting to form seeds heads.

The onions and corn have not been touched so far. The birds will probably wait until the corn is ready to pick before attacking them.

 The peas have not been touched but some of my beets have had some damage.

This is what's left of my two rows of beans that were starting budding to form beans. They've eaten my pepper leaves but did not touch the peppers itself. I did not take a picture of it. 

Yesterday I spied several ripe large bluberries and I was busy taking pictures for the blog so this morning when I went to give them the taste test, they were nowhere to be seen, lol. 

This is only a small sample of my sweet potatoes having been munched on. They were doing so well. 

My hydrangeas have been attacked also. 

My phlox had their tips clipped also. I wish the deers would clip my hedges instead of my flowers.

The deers also clipped many of my Asiatic lilies in every one of my beds. Even my giant Asiatic lilies.

This hosta was beginning to bloom and they couldn't resist.

Here is the other hosta that got the covid clip.

I caught a gopher eating the blossoms of this potted petunia, and I chased him away and had to put a barrier.

And he had eaten some blossoms of these petunias as well so the fencing went up here as well. Gardening can be challenging but also haying. Yesterday, one of our farmworkers ran into several gopher holes in a field and broke the PTO on the farm machinery. Now that's serious business.

Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope that you have better luck at gardening than I have so far this year. I appreciate your kind comments.

MAY BROUGHT ME SO MUCH BEAUTY, BUSYNESS, AND HEART ACHES.

May is bringing me lots of joy, lots of garden and yard work, fiddlehead picking, office paper decluttering, some long-awaited tests at the hospital since November, and my heartache is that my brother's 14 years old granddaughter has gone missings since May 11th, and no clues as to where she is. 

 A suspect has been arrested on evidence they found in his truck but he's not speaking and the police are not giving any details as there is a publication ban. It is now a criminal investigation.  And Blogger is not being nice to bloggers today.  

Creeping phlox and white daffodils

Creeping phlox on the rock wall

Crab apple tree suffered damage by armyworm this year.  I took down three big nests and a large patch on the trunk of the tree after I noticed that they had eaten buds and leaves.

The large daylily bed.

Creeping phlox and white daffodils and yellow Leopards Bane 

Daffodils by the big rock.

One of my many bags of mulch of garden debris that I'll be using to mulch some flowerbeds. I do this every year instead of throwing it away.  This year, I used the branch shredder instead of my lawnmower as my husband got a young mechanic to change the motor since it had been in the flood twice. It was much faster.

Blogger didn't want me to remove this duplicate photo.  They no longer have "delete" in the settings and I had to drag the photos in. I have done this at other times with success but I could delete photos then but now there is no "delete button"   or I haven't figured it out yet.

Golden alyssum  on the rock wall 

 Some of my many red tulips just before they finished blooming.

My first asparagus crop, grown from a package of seeds that I planted last year. I only harvested these as I want to let them get established before harvesting next year.

Nice fat fiddlehead after washing. The ones in the sink have been blanched.

16 pounds of nice big juicy fiddlehead that I blanched. I only went to pick once this year. 

I've been shredding old files for the farm business and this is only a tiny sample of what I will be shredding over a period of time. I just hope the old shredder holds off. In the meantime, the office is in a mess.

More old files that were shredded and it's just the beginning.  I only shred on rainy days but I need a new cord on the old shredder before I resume the gigantic task. I shredded 16  large blue Glad recycle bags so far. It's very time-consuming as I have to check every file before shredding.

It's been a long time since my last post and I hope that I'll do a better job of blogging next time. 

Stay safe and well. Thanks for your comments.  

Hugs,  Julia