Paramount Protection

As if the continual struggle to maintain a socially respectable garden (or even a personally disappointing garden) wasn't enough, in addition to the obstacles of pounding rain, hail, late snows, early or late frosts, extreme temperature swings, tornadic winds, drought, insects, plant diseases, poor soil fertility, and just general calamity and misfortune, one must also consider the damages wrought by higher order creatures such as deer, rabbits, and the neighbor's occasionally-present dog.    

I've been oscillating all Spring on an action plan to limit the damage caused to my roses by a particularly prolific passel of rabbits in my garden.   At one point, a few weeks back, I recall looking out my back window and counting no fewer than 4 bunnies visible in my field of view (which likely doesn't even come close to the number that were hiding).  Bunnies, as many here are aware, don't eat daylilies or weeds or Wild Lettuce or native forbs, they preferentially eat, to my chagrin, roses, and go after the young tender ones first! When several young rose starts were pruned almost to the ground, I briefly contemplated ventilating their circulatory and respiratory systems with solid lead deterrents, but instead chose to spend $28 on a 25 foot spool of galvanized wire and made these protective cages, 11 of them so far.   I'll report back on how they work in the long run, but so far they seem to be keeping the rabbits away.

I was even more alarmed at finding this sight one morning; I've been watching this hollyhock patch daily, anticipating a fabulous bloom, but obviously another creature viewed it as an "all you can chomp" smorgasbord.  A creature measuring about 4 foot tall at the mouth and one that I suspect is hooved, with velvet lips and a fluffy white tail.   

The very sight panicked me, for this is just one "clump" in a large area of self-seeded hollyhocks, all otherwise healthy and forming some large delicate blooms.  I was counting on this patch to give me a luscious, even heavenly, hollyhock display, and now I was looking at the potential destruction of all of it, within a few nights, just bare stems and sadness left behind.  Should I stay awake all night with flashlights and a rifle at hand?  Keep pots and pans handy to startle them away? Hang soap and garlic from some stakes in the area?  Build a 10 foot tall peripheral fence topped with barbed wire and mined for 30 feet into the prairie?

Well, I won't keep you in suspense.   I ran quickly to the store to find a fresh supply of a repellent and chose this one.  Composed, among other things, of "putrid egg solids," I can attest, spraying it around the hollyhocks, that it indeed has an unpleasant odor, and I've found that Mrs. ProfessorRoush can detect it from more than 5 feet away, which is the closest she allowed me in her presence for quite some period of time after spraying the plants.  A week has gone by and the hollyhocks are blooming now and I can fully endorse it as a deterrent for close contact with deer and wives.  One takes a win where and when it occurs!

Oh, and the neighbor's dog?   Well, Liquid Fence doesn't work to keep that moron out of my flower beds.  In fact, evidently, rotten eggs are an aphrodisiac when you only have two neurons that synapse together.  At least the bumbling idiot hasn't trampled one of my wire cages yet!