Funeral lilies

This is a mournful week, marred by the tragic and untimely murders of beautiful members of my garden family--my oriental lilies. They are not the only victims of the ruthless vandals that decimated my property, but they are my favorites and are gone baby gone.

My stargazer lilies. What they looked like last year.
I won't get to enjoy them for another 13 months.

We have a six-foot deer fence surrounding our entire yard and garden. Last year, this fence worked like a charm, and despite the herd of deer that live in the woods behind and adjacent to our property, not one of them ever attempted to scale the obstacle. This year, we expanded the fencing to enclose a larger section of our property, including some of the wooded area that we are thinning out and preparing to landscape. Apparently the deer are not fond of evacuating their previously-claimed territory.

Three days ago, as Hubby opened our sliding glass door to take the dog for its early morning walk, he caught the malicious marauder in my bed of day lilies, enjoying a banquet of the newly formed flower buds. Hubby throws a rock at the deer, just missing it. Deer looks at Hubby smugly and goes back to its meal. Second rock sails just past its head. Deer shrugs, and starts moseying along, casually snacking as it starts to exit the garden. Hubby now begins chasing it, and it lazily lopes toward the perimeter fence and jumps over a section that was hanging a bit low. Hubby spent the dog-walking time re-stapling the fence to its proper height.

We attributed the invasion to the fence malfunction, but this giant doe already got a taste of the candy banquet inside the garden. When I arrived home that afternoon, Cavan and I head up to her swing set, where I see the vandal again, inside the fence. I let the dog loose as well as hurl my pregnant body toward the intruder, yelling and waving like a banshee. The dog scares it and it runs smack into the fence, kicking its legs until it rips down 60-feet of black mesh before making its exit. Hubby rushes home to repair the panels before dark.

Surely, after being chased away twice, particularly by a snarling dog, it should be scared to come back, right?

The next morning, I check on the garden before leaving for work. That bastard deer came back. This time eating the tops and buds off of five of my oriental lilies and devouring most of the buds on a bed of my mini-roses. Shit man! I check the fence--no visible damage or downed panels. It has now figured out how to scale the fence. Well, there's nothing I can do before work, so off I go, praying that the hot weather will cause my new worst enemy to lay low during the day.

Of course not. The deer had to pick hell week for its stealth attack. The last full week of school, where I have eight billion papers to grade, after school meetings, and a multitude of other responsibilities preventing me from spending a single second in the garden. Same with Hubby. I have a recipe and all the ingredients for deer repellent, but at that moment I had no viable time for mixing it up and spraying it on. When I arrived home from work, I found 3/4 of my oriental lilies topped off. I have 30 of them in a border along our patio wall. Only six remained that evening. I went to bed last night, literally praying that the deer would hold off their assault till the weekend when I could meet them head-on.

This morning, with apprehension, I opened our patio door. Disaster. Not only were all the buds of the lilies gone, but most of the leaves were too. I am left with naked stalks. When Hubby left at 7:00 am, they were fine. Well, not fine, but in the same condition as the previous evening. Two hours later, when I checked on them--munched down to their spines. But that's not all. Every rose bush was eaten. I have six-size, full bloom rose bushes. Every flower, every bud. And every remaining day lily. Gone. And all my miniature hollyhock, which hadn't started budding, but probably won't now since 90% of their foliage is gone. I was seriously depressed all day.

Though I had to rush home after school to go to Hubby's school art exhibition this evening, I stopped at the nursery and bought Liquid Fence. Oh it's so foul. Cavan watched as I held back my vomit while misting my entire garden with the putrefied-egg-and-garlic based spray.  I had to shower immediately afterward because my legs and arms were coated in a fine mist of rotten foulness due to the light breeze while contaminating my garden. Please, please stop the deer. I cant' bear the heartache of watching my hard work and patience be devoured by mangy, tick-infested creatures.

BUT, I do hope the deer come back one more time. On Saturday morning when I'm laying in wait, BB gun in hand, ready to shoot them in their faces. Yes, I want the satisfaction of inflicting painful punishment. I can only fantasize about having a real gun and watching deer blood spurt across our patio.

Weeds and roses

I didn't make much headway this weekend on new landscaping because I devoted myself to the painful task of weeding. Since I haven't mulched yet this year—I'm waiting for the free mulch pile to return (I have a lot of square feet to cover)—I have weeds coming up everywhere. Three days of weeding and I only have one section left to do. By the time I finish the task this week, I'll probably have to start over! ARG!

But the weeding gives you time to survey each of your plants with thoughtful devotion. And I discovered that many of my roses are afflicted with blackspot, a common rose disease. Upon research, blackspot tends to thrive in wet, cool weather—we had 10 days of 50 degree rainy weather before our beautifully sunny week last week. I had to go buy a rose-specific pesticide at Home Depot today, which should nip it in the bud. (Pun. HA!)

And speaking of roses, I would have never guessed that my bushes would actually be in bloom for Memorial Day, but my red and pink mini roses are all flowering! My large roses bushes have several buds ready to pop in the next couple days. It's amazing what a week of sunny, warm weather will do for a garden.

Another high point of the weekend—my herb seeds are growing. Despite the herbicide I sprinkled in the garden, my dill, cilantro, basil, parsley, and chive seeds all germinated. I wonder how long it will take for them to actually be big enough to harvest for cooking?

Big backhoe weekend (lots of photos!)

We had a big landscaping weekend for the first warm days of the spring. Yesterday, we hired a backhoe/bulldozer to come to the property to move and place stones (boulders) to build a rock wall retaining our vegetable garden. Then we shaped and graded the property to backfill the new wall and provide a flat tier for the veggie raised beds and a new lawn area. Finally, we had the backhoe pull out 11 stumps. Whew, that was a long, grueling day for Hubby. He planned on a second day of landscaping work for today, but his back muscles we in agonizing spasms all last night...a tell-tale sign of over-doing it on the first real "work" day of the year! For more on amazing Hubby, check out The Almost Stay-At-Home Mom tomorrow (hint, he gave up watching the Masters to shape my garden!)

And while Hubby was doing all the heavy lifting, Cavan and I were getting dirty in the flower beds. Cavan was dressed appropriately (adorably) in her pink Cardhartt overalls, thanks to a shopping trip to Farm and Home Supply with Grandma in the Midwest. We planted 10 baby blue spruce trees in milk jugs to establish a solid root system before transplanting along one of our property borders (an area that still needs to be shaped before putting in permanent plantings.) Then in the bed bordering our patio, we planted 12 new mini roses (rosa randilla 'raspberry magic' & rosa 'sugar plum') and then transplanted three light pink (rosa randilla 'pink magic') and three yellow (rosa randilla 'yellow magic') mini roses as well. They should be in full bloom by Memorial Day.

Then, we moved a lilac bush, planted some day lilies and did a preliminary weeding of all the garden beds, which were infested with wild onion growth! Ooh, those are a pain in the butt to dig out—if you miss getting the bulbs, they will just keep coming back. In addition, the seedlings spent the day outside, well-watered and monitored, to prevent them from withering and wilting in the sun and breeze. Overall, the day was a HUGE success and all three of us were in bed at 8:30, though Cavan was wide awake talking to all her stuffed animals as we passed out.

While today was very light compared to yesterday's accomplishments, we did go to Home Depot to pick up the boards to build the raised beds and bags of grass seed. And when we got home, I planted two full-sized rose bushes (rosa 'moondance' and rosa 'midas touch'), whose roots had been pre-soaking in a bucket of water overnight.  When digging the holes for the roses, I dug up several of last years gladiolas bulbs. They are not supposed to survive the winter in zone 6, but they looked healthy and were four times the size they were upon planting last summer. I replanted them in a new spot, just in case they will come back. What a nice surprise if they do!

Next weekend, Hubby hopefully recovered, will be another big backhoe weekend, as well as building/filling the veggie beds. Photos and updates to come!