Wild life mini disasters

One of the downsides of living on a rural farm is the wildlife seem to become less wild in the daily presence of humans.

When our children were young and we lived in a coastal surburban area, we would travel to the mountains for a weekend vacation hoping to see deer and an occasional bear. Loved watching the chipmunks scurry under the stone stairs of the cabin. Seeing raccoons, sometimes with a brood in tow peeking over the stone retaining walls along the Parkway.

Well, they all live here and are much less wary of humans than it seemed they were when we were actively trying to see them. The deer barely look up from eating when we drive down the gravel driveway. The chipmunks dig holes in the deck plants. Food scraps left in the compost pile disappears overnight. And the deer come right up on the patio to eat the sunflower volunteers under the bird feeder, knock over the flower pots on the deck steps looking for something on which to graze. The perenniel sunflowers and daylilies don’t stand a chance. They are planted right up against the house and I haven’t had daylily blooms in years. I don’t think to take before photos of the tipped over pots with potting soil spilled out on the steps. The one this morning is a huge pot up two steps that was sown with wildflower seed and was full of young plants a few inches tall. It has been righted, as much soil and seedlings as could be salvaged scraped up and as of this morning, those pots now have tomato cages with plastic mesh inside to discourage such behavior. The daylily bed has panels of old bent rusty fencing tunneled over the garage side bed to try to get a few blooms this year. It is discouraging to put in the work of planting and caring for beds and pots to have them destroyed within feet of where we live.

The orchard is their feast, it is across the other side of the vegetable garden seen in the above photo. They are welcome to feasting in the orchard, there is too much fruit for us anyway. The vegetable garden has 4 foot fence with a solar charged electric wire around the top, so the deer stay out of it, but the rabbits flourish. Hopefully with the unused part mowed back, they will be less bold. To get in the garden, they have to go through the chicken tunnel except on the house side. That fence is in very poor shape, so perhaps that side should be refenced with rabbit fencing to block their ingress, however the gate still leaves bunny sized holes around it.

We love seeing the wildlife that share our farm, but they have 30 acres of grass and woodlands in which to graze. Leave my flowers alone.