I had naively thought that the deer issue last summer had to do with the drought. Not so. Apparently there is at least one deer that has found my garden and enjoys the fruits of my labor on a regular basis. About 4 or 5 of the tomato plants I planted last week have been eaten. Most should recover but one was taken down to about a 2 inch stalk. I know it was a deer as I found his/her tracks in the freshly tilled soil. I decided something was in order if I wanted to have any hopes of having any tomatoes this year. I decided to take some chicken wire and make a god-awful looking cage around the lot of them. I had originally wanted to create individual cages but didn’t have the wire and wasn’t sure it would work the way I wanted it to. In the end I decided to go with this contraption for the existing plants. I still have some more to plant and those will probably get individual cages once I purchase the wire for them (assuming my vehicles stop breaking down and there is any money left in the till).

The tree trunk is all that is left in the side yard. The landlord cut it down last year after the second time it broke threating the house. The trunk is about 3-4′ tall. I believe he thought it would come back. So far there are a couple of sprouts as there were last year but nothing even slightly resembling a tree. More than likely it will end up rotting in place over time. I decided to dress it up a bit by adding some color. I took long strips of bark and tried to seal off the open areas between the two trunks. I filled the cavity with soil and planted a couple of black eyed susan vines. Hopefully they will spill out over the trunk and bring some life to this dead old thing.

A couple of years ago DB gave me a start of her pink primrose. They are so pretty with their mottled leaves.