What to my wondering eyes should appear…

But two tiny little deer!

I was looking out the window one morning and these two little fawns went tripping across the backyard. They were so stinking cute. I didn’t have the heart to run out back and chase them away. I know that in about two months I’ll be regretting this because those little suckers will be eating all of my flowers, but they were so cute!! They still had their white spots and everything.

I love this next photo. It really makes me laugh. But no one else seems to think it is nearly as funny as I do. This photo is one of the reasons that I have started carrying Jim’s camera around with my everywhere. You just never know what you are going to see:

Yes. I stop and take photos of other people’s trash cans, especially when they killed Barney and are trying to get rid of the evidence.

We interrupt Italy photos…

No time for a long post with Italy photos today. So I decided to show you some of the stuff that’s going on around the homestead.

I was really glad to get home. I missed playing in my garden. But I am rethinking the size of some of my beds. When I got home, this is representative of what my beds looked like:

And this is one of the clean ones! We must have had a hell of a winter while we were gone. There are several perennials that just didn’t come back. And not ones that I planted the year before. I accept about a 50% loss on newly planted perennials. I am learning by trial and error what the deer like to eat and what can accept shady conditions. ‘Cause my yard doesn’t get a whole lot of light.

But I lost perennials that were several years old! My dianthus is gone, several of my Siberian Iri didn’t come out this year, coral bells, cottage pinks… Gone.

On the flip side, some annuals that I haven’t planted in years have started showing up… Pansies in the front bed (none there for 18 months), snapdragons in rock beds (I haven’t had snapdragons for at least two years). I have echinacea that shows up EVERYWHERE. I have two in my front bed and they are active suckers. I dig probably 10-15 babies out of the yard every year!

But I digress.

I got everything all weeded in the back and put in some pretty flowers on the 4th of July. We had friends over and I couldn’t handle sitting out back looking at the weeds:

In addition to all of the flowers in the ground, I planted some planters and had them on the edge of the deck to add some color.

This is what I woke up to on July 6th:

Those were begonias. (See my shadow on the bottom!! Cool.)

This is what I call the buffet:

Those used to be petunias.

What really burns me about this though is that the only petunias they ate were the ones on the patio. They left the ones in the beds alone. What is it with these deer? Are they now too lazy to bend their necks and eat the ones on the ground? Is this what I’ve led these deer to?

Oh deer!

Some of you might know the saga of me and the deer in my backyard. If you don’t, just wait until spring and I am gardening again. You’ll hear all about it.

I’m used to waking up during the winter and seeing deer tracks all over the backyard. Occasionally, the deer are even hanging out back there, nibbling on what ever green is poking out of the snow.

It’s reached a new low in my backyard though. The deer are now bedding down in the MIDDLE of my backyard. Not hiding under the trees, or sheltered near the bushes, but in the middle of the yard.

I don’t know how to do arrows in Photoshop, so I used lines instead.

You can see the tracks wandering around the backyard too. If you could see my neighbors backyard, there are NO tracks at all. I’ve tried to convince them that they can let their dogs run around in my yard too, but to no avail.

At least I won’t have to see the devastation of my flowers this year.