Vegas was great!! We did shopping, went to see a show, gambled a bit, we had a blast. I enjoyed it immensely! I want to do it again, maybe in February or March, or at least some time early next year.
The weather has been cooling down, at least for this area its cooling down. The days have been high 80’s and low 90’s. The nights are low 70’s, even a few high 60’s. The other day we even had fog in the morning. Granted, it burned off quickly but it was a definite change.
The deer have been coming out in droves. There’s another new fawn, still with spots. Its so much smaller then the rest of the young ones. And we’ve been seeing the bucks with antlers. Not what I would call large antlers, and not large males. But they’ve got antlers growing out of their heads. Sometimes it looks like a bachelor party in the back yard.
But those lovely deer are eating my things again. I had a small gardenia plant, it had been a house plant but I repotted it and it was sitting outside. Some lovely creature decided it looked tasty and ate part of it. Its coming back and has new growth. One of the mint plants that were outside has also been eaten. Even though they are listed as deer resistant, I don’t think the deer know they aren’t supposed to like mint. So the deer have been eating it. It will probably come back too. I did buy two mums, small pots. We’ll see if the deer eat those too. Again, their tags say deer resistant, but we’ll see what the deer actually think.
But everything else is looking good. I planted the last rosemary plant we had sitting around. It still had some green on it. I also planted a lantana that had not yet been planted. I found a confederate jasmine that needed to be planted and put it in the ground too. We’ll see if these plants make it. But with the cooler weather I believe they will have a chance.
The stores now have bulbs available for planting. I picked up some daffodils, bearded iris and iris bulbs for the yard. I just got them so I haven’t put them in the ground yet. I figure I will put them in the front yard somewhere. I doubt the daffodils are deer resistant, but a neighbor said that irises do well and that the deer don’t eat them. We’ll see if the deer eat our iris and not the neighbor’s.
But overal the yard is looking okay. The landscape company put some plants down at the entry to the street. We have two standards with lights near the street. They put in a variety of native plants in semi-circles around the standards. The idea is that we will try to make the yard look more finished and slowly fill in the rest. It is a big yard so it is going to take some time. It won’t get done quickly but we are working on it. We are even finally talking about what to do in the back yard. We will have to fence a small area and do something in there. It doesn’t make sense to fence all of it, and of course we are a pathway for the deer and that has to be taken into consideration. So if we can fence a small area around the back, close to the house we will have an area where we can actually put plants that will be sheltered from the deer. It may not be sheltered from other animals, but it will be sheltered from the deer. The fact we are even talking about it is great. And I know it will be a while until it actually gets done, but here it will be best to plan something first. It will be a lot of work to get a fence in or to get anything else in in the backyard. So we will take our time, plan it out, talk to the landscaper and see what makes sense and will work before we start the work. I just hope with all the talk and planning it actually works.
