What To Do As Spring Approaches

Well last year's container experiment was a loser, mostly because the plants got a blight early on for reasons I'm not quite certain of. I think maybe it was something in the potting soil I used but I'm not sure. I rank it as a failure however, which is very annoying.

Then a couple of weeks ago in the early twilight my wife and I turned onto our road to find what at first looked like four or five large dogs in the street. As we came closer and the headlights picked up the animals we were surprised to see five large deer ambling down the center of the paved road like they owned the place. We drove very slowly because we didn't want to spook them, but it was quite uncanny. I joked that it looked like enough deer to keep us in venison for a few years.

Finally they ambled off onto the neighbors front yard and watched us drive by to back into the next door driveway. That event highlighted the fact that you can't just grow things around here because as soon as there's something good you'll have hooved raiders eating your produce. You need a fence. Our last house had a fenced in back yard that we'd put up so we never had deer problems although there was a gopher that liked to come out now and then. I never knew where he came from exactly, but he was a brazen beast and would appear in the backyard near the shed and watch us looking at him from the kitchen window.

I've been starting to think about what to do for this coming year. I think a hydroponics system would be nice but given that I have to worry about deer I'm not quite sure how to do it. I don't want to fence in the back yard. I'll have to think about this. Stay tuned.