Cohabitating with mule deer in their natural habitat provides you with exactly two options. One option is to surround your yard with high fences so you can grow pretty stuff within. The other option is to allow the space around your house to assume the modest sensibilities of the landscape around you.
I
have been cohabitating with deer for over thirty years and have managed to do
so by xeriscaping my yard with a sparsity of “deer-proof” flora.
If
you are married to a Filipina and living in deer country (read Mitch Hegman
here), the choice between the two options is likely to shift directions. You may need to invest in fencing material
and lumber.
Having
been raised in a tropical paradise, my island girl wants flowers, fruiting
plants, and green around her at all times. She desires plants with baubles and bows and
whistles and bells. You know. Deer food.
This
year, we will begin the process of a green transformation for parts of my yard. As a starting point, I picked up materials
and constructed a cage around a small garden plot we prepped last fall before winter
fell upon us.
For
the purpose of easy access, I provided an easily removable six-foot panel on
the front of the cage.
More
to come later.
Working
on the Fencing in My Kitchen Shop
The Completed Cage
Front
Panel Removed.
—Mitchell
Hegman
When I was four years old we lived in a cabin on Kings Hill outside White Sulpher springs. It was a logging camp. The owner of the nearest bar had a pet deer that wandered all over the hill. With no electricity my mother would put her apple pies in an apple crate nailed to the window (our solution to no refrigeration) sill to cool. One time the pet deer came down and destroyed the apple crate to get to the cooling pie. I think the reason I remember it so well was my mother chasing the deer with a broom and cursing at the whole time.
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