The Unofficial Deer Buffet

Why is it that you can spend an entire morning or evening in the woods hunting for deer and not see anything, but come spring time they all come out of hiding and appear in my garden??? I'm pretty sure it is a deer conspiracy. I think they have some type of network where they tell all of their little deer friends where to come for a garden buffet. And from the looks of the tracks, they line up for their turn to munch. Grrr! Many a morning I'll wake up early to water the tender shoots of corn, sweet peas, radishes, spinach, pumpkin, etc. and find the evidence - deer tracks all throughout the garden and little bites taken out of the tiny vegetable leaves. I seriously think the deer had a party in my garden the other night and they made sure to invite the whole gang. There were even cute little baby tracks next to the zucchini.

So in an effort to put a stop to the partying, we put a fence around the perimeter the other evening while the soft rain was refreshing the deer nibbled plants. I'm not sure if the fence line is quite tall enough though, because I've seen how high those boogers can jump! We shall see.

As you can also notice from the picture above, I don't have the best of soil. This is year 2 for my garden. The first year we hauled in several loads of topsoil and compost to till into soil. I actually had quite the harvest that first year.. but it was a lot of work! It never ceases to amaze me how you can spend so much time working the soil and tending to the weeds, and yet the work never seems to be done. The rocks appear out of nowhere and the stubborn weeds keep coming back. Hmm... Seems like life sometimes. However, I find myself actually enjoying spending time keeping up with pulling weeds out of the garden - if only it was this enjoyable with the "weeds" in life.

As you can see, my garden is on top of a hill, where I have a gorgeous view of the mountains. So, when I find myself alone tending to weeds and caring for the emerging seeds, it is really MY Time where I can just get away, pray in the mornings, and come evening reflect on the days events. Good stuff. I find myself humming about now... "and He walks with me and He talks with me and tells me I am His own; and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known..."

So, after putting all this time and effort into my garden on the hill, it is a bit frustrating to find those deer tracks. I really wish I had a trail camera to post on my garden entrance. Then, if they manage somehow to gain entrance once again to my garden, I would have more proof than just footprints. Let's hope the fence works, because if they do figure out how to get in, I would probably just have fat and sassy deer smiling at the camera who have seemingly found their secret garden and now can't figure out how to get OUT.

My other garden anguish that I'm not even going into - Hail. I live in Colorado. What do I expect? Post fence protection placed securely around the garden, it happened. You guessed it. When it rains.. it hails in Colorado. Enough said.