I’ve been silent for a while now on here. Truthfully, I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. I’ve been busy with wedding plans for our oldest daughter, gardening and just trying to live life all while my laptop that I write on was broken. The cool thing about that is when I took it in to get repaired, it was repaired for free! I was beyond thrilled and give credit to God. We didn’t really have the extra money to repair it and we don’t have insurance on our laptop so there was no true reason for it to be free. I’m not complaining, only thankful!
Our oldest daughter is getting married in a week so the majority of my headspace goes to that special day. However, there is one other thing that is prying its way into my brain, our garden and the deer that are destroying it. I started the tomatoes in February from seeds, caring and nurturing them, watching over them, transplanting them several times, hardening them off and planting them in our garden. They reached about three feet and deer have decided my tomatoes have been planted for their food.
After some google searches, we learned that there are several methods to deter deer from eating gardens. The first night after we discovered some munched on plants, we covered plants in chili powder and cayenne pepper and shredded up a couple bars of Irish Spring soap. I also bought some deer deterrent spray and my hubs put up a short fence to keep small animals out. The next morning we were hopeful when we saw deer tracks but no more plants eaten. I added some hair along the edges of the garden and shaved the rest of the bars of soap. The next morning, we woke up and went to water the garden and that is when we discovered 10 plants eaten down to just one foot tall! I felt discouraged and went back to google. One suggestion I read was bird netting over plants. I was thrilled as I had just that in all my gardening goods! The hubs and I went out and stretched it over top of half of the tomato plants and emptied the rest of the bottle of deer deterrent on plants. I continued googling methods to deter deer and I stumbled upon a motion activated water sprinkler. This intrigued me. I found one on amazon that had good reviews and same-day delivery so I ordered it. We also picked up another bird netting and more deer deterrent. I am taking this attack from the deer seriously. Maybe too seriously. Maybe it’s a good distraction from the stresses of my first baby girl getting married.
Setting up the motion activated sprinkler was relatively easy and fun testing it out. We adjusted the settings and started testing it. We got slightly wet but the best part was tricking one of our kids to walk in front of it. I could barely contain my giggles as he walked toward it. He thought we bought a trail cam (I want one of those too) and started to look at it when it started spraying him with water. I laughed so hard as he jumped away from the water. We did this to the right kid as he also got a good laugh out of it.
Since we had the netting and deterrent spray, we covered the rest of the plants and sprayed all the edges that weren’t properly covered. Tomorrow morning, my first steps will be to the garden to see how we did in this battle.
Our son, the one we tricked with the sprinkler, compared me to Mr. McGregor in the Peter Rabbit movie. I wonder if an electric fence with peanut butter is in our future (probably not). If you haven’t seen Peter Rabbit, I highly suggest that movie, it’s hilarious.
The Broken Road 