Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2014 - 61

deer companions

mainTaininG a sense
oF HUmor
Sometimes it's through gritted teeth,
but the gardening life is better, leavened
with laughter. As, for instance, when
the weekly newsletter Reems Creek
Nursery emails to subscribers suggested
mid-June was a good time to "cut
back late bloomers . . . so they will be
bushier and less floppy." Among the
flowers benefiting from such treatment:
Joe Pye-weed and asters. No need to
add that to my To Do list. Thanks to
my deer companions, those plants and
the garden phlox were receiving nearly
nightly haircuts. -ECH
borrowed loads of gardening books
from the library; gradually I built a
home library of favorites that fills
two bookshelves next to my desk.
Some I consult regularly: the ones
that tell me the water, soil and light
requirements of plants I have or want
to add, and when is the best time to
move things around. Those I never
take down involve garden design.
The living world is dynamic; I've
learned that, given the chance, bits
of landscape design themselves, as
the area near the smokehouse is
beginning to.
I'm not talking about letting
chaos reign, but about gardening
intuitively: subtracting, adding, collaborating with the best of what's
out there. When I began clearing the
area near the smokehouse, the one
element I knew I wanted to retain
was a witch hazel I never noticed
when the mulberry tree was alive,
though it must have been there. In
the last couple of years it has come
into its own and made its presence
known to me. Witch hazel has the
singular virtue of blooming in late

The spidery blooms of witch hazel appear in late October, lighting up the woods
as autumn's foliage fades.
cHoose yoUr baTTles

coeXisTinG WiTH WildliFe
Deer devour daylily buds. Bunnies breakfast on the lawn's white clover, then top off
the meal with lobelia. Coons attack corn the day before you planned to harvest it.
Birds peck strawberries; ants invade the cavities. Even a vigilant dog and a tall fence
won't solve all your wildlife problems. A suggestion: Choose your battles, make
hard choices, and stay nimble. My corn comes now from the farmer's market; my
greens grow in cages; a sprinkle of bloodmeal on and around the lobelia seems to be
working. My Havahart trap lets me relocate groundhogs and possums. Sorrowfully,
I'm eliminating daylilies, but I'm compiling a list of plants the local wildlife seems not
to care for: irises, peonies, pinks, marigolds, bee balm, milkweeds, zinnias. (Each year
I'll experiment with a few others.)

October, when it and all its deciduous
kind are dropping their leaves and
going dormant for the winter. It has
an airy, subtle beauty, and I wanted
to give this one a chance, to keep it
from being swallowed up by the
thuggish briars and buckeye saplings.
That's what I was doing - clearing
back to the witch hazel - when the
phoebes stopped me. When I return

to work there, I'll know now to spare
the roses - perhaps even the blackberries, or some of them. I'll take a
heavy hand to the buckeyes, periwinkle, even the black raspberries.
I've got plenty of those elsewhere.
With them gone, in spring I'll look
around for what else shows up, at
least til the phoebes move in and I
have to cede the territory. 
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014 | 61

Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2014

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