Flipside: War--With Nature

Amy Johnson Crow has a 52 Ancestors Week blog challenge which I have decided to join. I am hoping it may help me to pinpoint someone or something that I have researched and not blogged about on Flipside. AND push me to blog about family each week in 2024. Sometimes I get lazy. 😁 Let's see how well I keep up.

Week # 17 (April 22-April 28) is War.

We moved into our current house in the summer of 1988. It is a pie shaped lot with the majority of the yard behind the house. The backyard was covered with a very deep tree canopy causing little to grow and dirt showing more than grass.

I didn't pay much attention to gardening then. I had two growing sons and part time employment which kept me busy. However as the boys grew up and I became tired of looking at the horrible backyard, I became a gardener.

Some trees were removed, a two story deck added and I began to get my hands dirty planting various varieties of Hosta's and numerous perennials. Garden areas were dug out around the deck and the back of the house. I added two different paths.

By 2000 the gardening had become an obsession. Annual photos and notes were saved and early spring garden and perennial planning began. Every spring a new garden area was added.

My city had been trying to put a road through an area nearby. The ecological fight was that it would cross a portion of a nature reserve and a wetland area. In 2014 the road was built and sound barrier walls erected on either side of it. Deer were trapped in our residential area. Lacking their usual food resources they began to eat what they found. As Dr. Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, "Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way."

And find a way they did. My entire backyard became a feeding area for deer. Sometimes a small herd of them would be outside eating the Hosta's and every other tasty perennial and annual to the ground. What was once a lush and beautiful yard was complete devastation. I was sick!

I fiddled around with it for a year or two. Trying different types of deer repellants that frankly, did not work. In 2017 I began my war against the deer. I do research for my genealogy. Why not do research finding plants that are deer resistant? And research I did.

All Hosta's were potted and moved up on the deck. Grasses and fescue became my friends and they come in so many different varieties and colors. Metal fencing enclosed all outside gardens where perennials grew that the deer would eat or trample. A beautiful patio area complete with water features and a fire pit was added.

Today I don't mind visitors. In fact, I welcome them.

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