Challenges to Overcome

I try to post only positive things, but this is an update of sorts on the rock garden. I'm trying to get it all weeded one last time this month, before winter.

But, I am definitely going to have to fence this somehow next spring.

Something has been eating plants. A lot of plants. I don't think they've killed anything for good yet, but it's fairly serious. Here's one that the damage shows well for the camera.

This one is not a succulent, and the entire top is eaten out of it. Non-discriminatory munching.

An awful lot of plants have been nipped or pulled up.

I've been suspecting the woodchuck, but this next issue has me annoyed and perplexed. A lot, I mean a LOT of the plant stakes are broken in two. Notice this one is in 3 pieces. I want you to know that I ordered these stakes because they are heavier plastic. I was tired of the thin stakes disintegrating in the sun. But I was having problems believing that a woodchuck would do this.

What the heck? Well, I should have guessed. Look who is grazing on the rock hill.

Why haven't I had this problem before? We always had a dog when I was previously working very hard on this garden. I didn't go away for a whole month at a time, either.

So, come spring, there is going to have to be a solution. The bird netting I put around the front garden worked quite well, although it was broken down when I got home from the past month. Thankfully, things that got eaten in September should be OK in the spring. The netting doesn't look totally ugly either. It does make it a lot harder for me to get in and out of the gardens, but that can be worked with.

Just in the unlikely case that you don't recognize those dainty footprints, it's the deer that are playing havoc with my efforts.

In other news, I edited, I did some stuff for NCTA, and I worked on the rock garden.

See Rock Garden Report 7