Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Animal Battles

I've written about my battles with the deer and the measures I've taken to minimize the damage from their eating habits.  I can say I have partial victory in that regard.  Only partial because my Deer Protection Plan is concentrated in the backyard and the deer still manage to browse through out front.

Look carefully at this Autumn Joy sedum in Mom's Garden out front and you'll see they've been eating the leaves and some flowers.

This silhouette shows the damage.


Fortunately they don't like the pink muhly grass.


Another animal I battle is the ground hog.  I saw yesterday that it was gathering dead leaves and taking them into its den under my porch.  Won't be long before its hibernating but in the meantime it is munching away.  Lately its been favoring some new yarrow that I planted so I had to take action to keep it out.

They (I think there is more than one) live under the porch.
Here are the two entrances.  The chicken wire did no good.




It's an easy toddle for them to the Perennial Garden.


One stop is here to eat the forget me nots.



They've been in this patch of black eyed susans.



This bed is where I planted some new perennials.  The aster has a fence of bamboo stakes around it.



The yarrow has a tomato cage with netting newly installed this morning.




When I planted these several weeks ago I thought the cone flowers would be their target plants so protected that with chicken wire.  Didn't know they liked yarrow.


Next year I will have to do better to get those ground hogs out!