It has indeed been a good day, for both of us, though I'm sorry for your heat. I was in San Antonio about three weeks ago and it was awful even then.
We've never thought about feeding our deer. On the contrary, until we got a better fence up around the garden we were more likely to seek ways to encourage them to feed elsewhere. Even now I can't grow peas, because they eat them right off the fence. (Oh, I suppose I could erect a fence inside the garden for them, but it seems sort of dorky when your whole garden is surrounded by a 7foot fence to not use it but put up an inside fence.) Actually, I don't grow many vegetables any more; my wife took over the garden for her roses after getting totally frustrated with the deer devouring them, thorns and all, year after year. So now it's basically a flower garden. I could always make more garden, I suppose, but that's easier said than done. First, we live on bedrock so we don't garden so much as we quarry. Everthing I plant that requires any root space I have to pickaxe out a hole for and fill it with dirt before planting. Our garden is raised bed, which is the only answer for any amount of gardening, so I would have to build more raised beds, buy the dirt to fill them, and build a 7 foot deer fence around the whole thing. Somehow I've never gotten around to it. Maybe when I'm retired . . . But the only things I really miss growing are tomatoes, peas, and corn; everything else seems to be nearly as good from the grocery store, and indeed I've never been able to successfully grow brussels sprouts or cabbage or other things like that since our garden is totally pesticide free.
It's a pity that everybody can't live in close harmony with nature the way you and I do. I grew up in the country, but lived for a while in cities, including NYC. Hated it. I am so happy to be back in the country again.
But people are different -- my father, moved out of the city (Philadelphia) to raise his children in the country because the city was no place to raise children, moved back to the city (NYC, to a studio apartment in Manhattan) when we had graduated from college and were on our own, and loved it. But even to be near him I couldn't live in NYC. Stuck it out for two years, but that was all I could take.
Fled to the other side of the country, and have never regretted it. |
