Pennsylvania Monsoons Stimulate Deer Population

I don’t know what it is about this season, but the deer are eating plants that they normally aren’t much interested in. We’ve had plenty of rain and there’s plenty of new growth. I’m thinking of calling our joint the Emerald Isle Ranch—something like that. Leaves and grasses are prolific and the streams are swollen. Yet, the deer are eating things like Astilbe—only the flowers, however. They’re also munching on the Holly leaves, something the deer will readily do in winter but this is the first time I’d seen it in summer. The oddest thing of all is that they’re eating the tiger lilies and the coreopsis, usually nipping the tenderest parts, the buds.

I’m not angry at the deer and like them very much, enough to be willing to share our plants with them. I do have some pretty excellent deer repellant, made of an organic compound, but I’ve been hesitant to spray it because it hasn’t stopped raining. Here in Pennsylvania, we’re having a regular monsoon season.

But it’s nice to see the little fawns in spring, even though they are plant predators. The deer are one of the happiest things about Pennsylvania, second only to the variety of plant life. There is an article I wrote for Associated Content which may be of interest. Take a look at it by clicking on the headline of this article. Or pop it into your URL line.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/978654/ten_deer_resistant_plants_for_deer_pg2.html?cat=32

Easy DIY Project to Protect Young Trees from the String Trimmer - Associated Content

Easy DIY Project to Protect Young Trees from the String Trimmer - Associated ContentThis is an article I wrote for another site about a totally cheap, easy, and effective DIY project to protect young trees from the string trimmer and the lawn mower. Once in a while something I invent actually works....

Swing Set

 

Early Summer Scene

 

I'd gone to a Cezanne and Beyond Exhibit in the big city--the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as a matter of fact. Naturally, you will see the Matisse/Cezanne/Kweigand influences...

Old Mill Pond

 

Appropos of nothing, I took a picture of this old wheat mill which operates by means of a water wheel. I missed this years opening but I've been to it before. It's a tremendous maze of wood, iron, and water wheels. The water makes use of early technology to take in the corn, grind it, move it alone, refine it further, bring it upstairs, drop it downstairs, back up again where it moves along a trough and is put into burlap bags. Our ancestors were almost as smart as we are, I've discovered.

The mill is beautiful, ingenious, and was capable of being operated with only one man.

The Tulip Poplar Has a Pretty Flower

 

I went out very early for a walk along an abandoned country road this morning. It's getting hard to find an abandoned country road around here but I managed. The beautiful bloom from a Tulip Poplar fell into the road at my feet so I took this photo. I wish it were in better focus. I had my dog with me and she was being impatient so I could not summon my fuller photographic skills. It's pretty, nonetheless....