And then this happened...

Just when you're cruising along...

So I was on the way home from an evening out with one of my friends, minding my own business, when a doe bolted out of the woods and ran into the Charger. 

Yes, she hit me. I did not hit her. 

I am not pleased. 

I almost managed to swerve away from her, but I hit those damn rumble strips along the side of the road and that scared me more than the deer did. It all happened in a flash.

The only damage to my Charger is the crack in the nosepiece which I will have repaired after the first of the year. Until then, there's Duct tape to stabilize it. Why wait so long? It's a scheduling thing. 

I took the Charger to my mechanic and he put it up on the lift and went over it. No mechanical damage. The car runs fine - no vibration, no strange noises. I was very lucky. 

The amusing thing happened the next morning when Deuce discovered that little tuft of deer fur stuck to the car. That's as close to sniffing a deer as my boy will ever get. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, white-tailed deer, Dodge Charger, Duck tape, rural living, country lifestyle, gratitude, Labrador Retriever, auto accident, 

 

It's a wind mystery

Last night, between midnight and two, we were grazed by a fast moving storm system. It didn't cause much damage on the manor, only snapping the top out of a cherry tree that was slated for firewood. The cousin and I knew the tree had some issues, and snapping off in a storm proved us correct. Having the top on the ground makes harvesting it a lot safer, so I'm good with that. 

The other "damage" is a bit more mysterious. The wind knocked over a deer barrier. Why mysterious? The deer barrier is constructed out of 2x4 exterior grade lumber. It's heavy. And there were 5-gallon buckets full of dirt sitting on its feet. 

This isn't the first time a barrier has been blown over. It happened to a different one last fall. I didn't think much of it at the time, believing it to be a freak occurrence and nothing more. Now that it has happened a second time, I need to apply some additional measures to keep the deer barriers in place. I ordered a pack of heavy-duty stakes and will drill a hole in each base and pound one stake into the ground. That should help anchor it along with the buckets. 

The really freaky thing is the red plastic flower pot in the foreground of the picture. If the wind was violent enough to knock over the deer barrier, why didn't that empty plastic pot fly away?

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, high wind damage, gardening, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life, security measures, white-tailed deer, flower pots, freak weather events

Squirrels - the new foe

I've been actively planning steps to defend my little garden from the deer, but I think I have a worse nemesis - the gray squirrel. 

Every day I walk over to the garden spot to check on the progress of the strawberries. They're doing great, by the way. A few days ago I discovered a squirrel had been digging in a few of the buckets. What the fuck?  Seriously???

I'm not sure how to combat these fancy rats. Shoot them, for sure, but I don't eat squirrel. Yes, I live at the gateway to Appalachia, but squirrel is not on the menu. 

This row of buckets is where I planned to plant Bell peppers. That's still the plan, but I need a fuzzy-tailed rat deterrent. Maybe something that flutters in the breeze will do the trick. 

People say that red pepper flakes or cayenne pepper will deter squirrels. I worry that they will irritate Deuce's eyes and nose if they are scattered about in a liberal measure. 

I'll be pondering this situation for the next few days. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, gardening, white-tailed deer, gray squirrel, rural living, country lifestyle, a writer's life, garden pests 

 

Damn the deer!!

My area has a big white-tailed deer problem. No joke. When I was a girl, we rarely saw a deer. Now you can't avoid them. I've had as many as seventeen in a group grazing in my front yard. I think DNR needs to schedule a cull because these animals are starving and inbreeding. It's evident in the shrinking size of the animals. 

It takes some serious counter-measures to thwart these creatures. Last spring I got eight strawberry plants from a local nursery and last fall a deer ate them to the ground. I covered the bed for the winter with leaves anyway. Plants are amazing and this spring I found at least thirty runners under the leaves. They've been transplanted into a second Greenstalk. The original eight plants are also doing well. I won't get much of a strawberry harvest this June, but I'll get a few to nibble on while I'm in the garden area. 

I've read that deer have very poor depth perception. To take advantage of that, I'm placing electric fence poles and T-posts outside the barricades. I also ordered a new 10x12 greenhouse and I plan to situate the frame from the old greenhouse as a barrier. My garden will be smaller this year since I'm on my own, but even if it was huge, I don't want to feed the deer.

I lost countless daylilies to the deer over the years. I had them in strips along the edge of the yard and they are all gone now. It's the same for the hosta. The deer even come up to the front porch and eat the rosebushes. 

The deer are a major problem. I may need to learn to cook venison. 

The Lady of Holly Tree Manor/The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, white-tailed deer, strawberries, Greenstalk, gardening, venison, rural living, country lifestyle, counter-measures, a writer's life

Deer season - it's not what it used to be around here

When I was a girl, deer season was a big deal. My dad wasn't much interested in hunting deer, but he'd traipse along with my grandfather and great-uncles on a "rabbit hunt." Yeah, rabbits. Take a walk through the fields in the middle of the day and then play poker until midnight. But, I digress...

My grandfather was the deer hunter. He was part of a group that went several hours down into the wilds of Virginia every year and set up camp for a week. Pop did pretty well on those outings. His best two bucks got mounted and hung on the wall, much to my grandmother's displeasure. Why did he go hours away to hunt? We didn't have many white-tailed deer around here sixty years ago. We do now.

Deer are everywhere here, so much so the state parks allow hunting. Maryland's white-tailed season stretches from September through January. The schedule is posted online and is six pages long. 

Thirty years ago, when the Lord of the Manor joined me, the first day of rifle season caught him off-guard. It was noisy at daybreak. The gunfire echoed off the mountain and the deer scampered into our woods for safety. 

I suppose laughing at him when he jumped straight out of bed with a "What the fuck?!" wasn't very kind, but I couldn't help it. I hadn't thought to warn him about the locals.

As I write this, it's Sunday morning, and we didn't expect to hear any hunters having at it. I commented that I'd heard two shots yesterday, that having lived here all my life, I knew emanated from the hunting area in the state park. That led to the realization neither of us had heard many shots since deer season had started. 

Things change. It's not because there are less deer. There are more and they are destructive. They can decimate a garden in one night, eating food some people depend on to survive. I no longer have flower beds because it's not worth the hard work required just so the deer can eat everything. My great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and myself all had beautiful flower gardens. As the last in a long line, it pains me to abandon the descendants of plants my great-grandmother grew in her garden. 

Without the hunters, the deer population will increase to the point the animals will starve. There isn't enough wild grazing left for them. They come to populated areas and eat gardens and crops. They cause numerous auto accidents every year, sometimes with fatalities. With the increase in deer, the coyotes are getting bolder. I've seen one in my woods and I don't like it at all. 

My yard is full of lead. Yes, I fire a gun at the ground so the noise scares the deer away. Even then, they are getting used to the sound. I can't actually shoot one of them for more reasons than I don't get a deer permit. I can't bring myself to kill them. They aren't spiders. What I am going to do is get a slingshot and bop a few of them with golf balls. I hope it stings! 

The Lady of The Hideaway

Holly Tree Manor, The Hideaway, white-tailed deer, hunting season, rural living, country lifestyle, coyotes, gardening, crop damage, Henry 001, hunters