Deary, Deery, Deer!

It's a good thing they're kinda cute because gardening with deer around can be a challenge.  Most of the time I'm okay with it and select plants accordingly.

On Sunday I took this photo of a red shrimp plant for my Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post.

A few hours later I walked through the same spot and noticed all but one of those same blooms missing.

I knew right away what had happened.  The deer, again.  Even though I had been out in the yard much of the time and they don't usually bother shrimp plants.

So I looked around....

I didn't have to look far because these two were over by the creek grazing and watching me.  They even waited while I retrieved the camera and calmly posed for their mug shots.

Busted!

I was surprised they went for the shrimp plants since one neighbor has a large bed of them right next to a popular deer hang-out by the creek.  Very few plants are completely deer proof.


Later  in the day I found this damage to a Bush Morning Glory in the front yard so it will have to move behind the fence.

We also planted a row of Hesperaloe parviflora along the driveway Sunday afternoon.  The next morning several had been pulled out.  

Deer typically inspect new plants this way so it wasn't a surprise even though hesperaloe are not palatable to deer.  My husband put them back in the ground and there was only a little damage since these are pretty tough plants.


In the last two cases, the "perp" made a clean getaway.  That's a lot of damage in just two days.


It's all part of living with deer in the neighborhood.