You are probably wondering what I mean by that title. Well, if you read last week's post, you saw that I had a deer get into my garden and do some damage. That same deer (my wife and I are pretty sure it's the same deer) has been just going up and down our street feeding in the same yards. As it stands right now I have baggies on stakes from a company called Green Screen, these plastic containers on stakes from a company called Sweeney's, and I have spread Deer Scram granules. Three deer deterrents, costing me some serious cash. So far, it seems to be working, but the deer continues to show up feeding on the neighbor's yards. Today the deer jumped into some one's back yard that had a Chihuahua on a leash in the backyard. That dog wouldn't have stood a chance against that deer. It's beginning to concern me enough that I think I will contact our city's animal warden. I don't know if they are capable of perhaps tranquilizing the deer and moving it to one of our local parks, but I have to at least call. The reason we are having a problem with our deer population is because there are no natural predators. No coyotes for some miles. I wish we did have some way of keeping the deer out of our suburbs.
So, if you thought that wasn't enough....this morning I walk out into the front yard and a ground hog goes running across the daylily field. As far as I can tell the ground hog isn't burrowed into my front yard. None the less I don't want him around digging holes either. I have trapped one in the past couple years using a have a hart trap and some green apples. I then transported the little guy to our local park. Hopefully he's having a great life out there.
Then to add insult to injury, I have people that walk by my property all the time since I live in a suburb where the houses are all right next to each other. There was this family walking by and this little boy goes running up one of my daylily aisles. My wife looked out the window and yelled for me seeing this kid in our front yard. Luckily his mom got him to come out before he could break any scapes. A broken scape is a hard thing for a daylily hybridizer to have to deal with. Be it from deer, groundhogs, or little kids. Don't get me wrong, I love children, just not running out of control through the garden as it comes into peak bloom. Moving along....I thought I would post a picture at the top of the page of some of the first blooms. The three in the front are Dan Trimmer's Calamity Jane, and the white one in the foreground is Ballerina on Ice from Vic Santa Lucia. The old fashioned golden orange daylily below it is an old favorite of mine, Orange Prelude from a hybridizer by the name of McEwen, hybridized in 1974. I really love Orange Prelude for it's color and the fact that it is one of the first daylilies to bloom each year. I put a picture at the bottom of the page of my seedling bed. I weeded my seedling bed this past week and put mulch on it. Weeding a seedling bed is a herculean task sometimes. It is very difficult to get the weeds out from in between the tightly packed seedlings. Some hybridizers prefer to use trays to start their seedlings out and I understand that approach. I guess I have my system for now. I try and find one of the most well drained areas in the yard and plant all my crosses from the last year. This one area seems to work the best. Well, there's my week in a nutshell. Hope everyone is enjoying some great bloom without the nuisance of deer and other pests.
