The good, bad, and ugly side of gardening.

First the good side - you get to grow all your fresh veg and when it's a good year you'll have flourishing beds, pretty flowers and bountiful harvests.

Now the bad side - your weather doesn't always cooperate, wild animals like in my case our resident horde of deer, several groundhogs and raccoon keep trying to eat anything you plant just as fast as you plant it. And you have bugs - whole lot of bugs, that also eat anything you plant down to the ground. Case in point my grapes that were stripped by deer down to nothing; and runner beans struggling in the main garden half alive after rolly-polly had breakfast, or the goozeberries stripped by cabbage caterpillars. Take your pick.


And the ugly - half an hour in the garden and you spend another half hour picking nasty bugs off of you. These hitch a ride on our resident deer and they are EVERYWHERE.

I'm yet to have a day in the garden this year when I did not come home with couple of ticks on me. C'est la vie.

8 comments:

  1. Ugh - I feel for you...it's so disheartening when all your hard work goes down the drain - or in this case, down into some critters stomach. But then you see flowers like in the 1st photo - they are gorgeous - just makes you want to smile!

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    1. I know, they are gorgeous and in couple of days the white one will open in between two purples and it will be even more striking.

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  2. Wow...I draw the line at ticks...haha. I don't know what I would do if carrying a few home with me was the trade off for having a garden. We have lots of rodents, deer, wild turkeys and insects around our parts but luckily, for the most part, they have not discovered my garden yet. Hopefully that will never change.

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    1. Actually it's a trade off for us living in the mountains with wildlife - ticks are here regardless if i have a garden or not, even going in the back yard you're going to get them as we don't have a fence and deer "graze" around all the time.

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  3. Isn't that the truth! Better luck to you! Nancy

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    1. Thanks, I just keep looking for positive and pretty side of the garden :)

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  4. Jenny - I put on bug spray every time I go on into the yard and garden. A must in order to keep the ticks, gangs, flies off me. It works.

    Sorry about the damage to your plants. Have you tried Liquid Fence to keep the deer away?

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    1. I spray my clothes with bugspray, but can't use it on skin, and yes we tried Liquid Fence but that did not help. At one point I squirted Liquid Fence straight at the deer's face as she was 2 feet away from me while I was inside - she was on the outside of the fence; and she didn't even flinch.

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