Deck Gardening and Deer in the City

Lured by the soft early morning light and inspired by storyteller Granny Sue, I took my camera out to the backyard this morning. Granted I could not hope for the bits of nature Granny Sue has just steps from her back door. She lives in a picturesque holler in West Virginia. We have a small in-town low maintenance yard - so over-planted that there is no room for another thing. We are growing tomatoes in pots on our deck.








As usual we have pots of flowering New Guinea Impatients on our deck. They are colorful, hardy and ask for very little care. I am city-bred - this is my kind of gardening. Stick them in, leave them be and enjoy the results.





To help the environment and shrink our carbon foot print - we are growing tomatoes. All right, its a small step.
We are also protesting the pathetic taste in those force-grown hard rocks they pass off as tomatoes.
Oh, for one of the white bread and mayonnaise with thick slices of home grown tomatoes sandwiches my grand-mother made for summer lunch when I was a kid in North Carolina.

OK! Ok! these do look anemic - but we have hopes for them.





These look more promising.

The deck does not have enough good sun and - - we need a re-fresher course in removing the
"suckers" .








There are nice clumps of Hostas beside the deck -

because the deer have not found them yet.

It is only a matter of time.


When I was a youngster the closest I got to a deer was Bambi - the book and the movie - there were no live deer in the city of Charlotte.
Not so where I live today. There are herds of deer roaming the environs of the greater metro area around the Nation's Capitol.
Deer saunter through our neighborhoods and feast in our well-planted, manicured suburban yards.

From a recent article in the Washington Post: " a woman police officer was driving along Massachusetts Ave. Near the Vice President's residence she slowed when she noticed three deer on the sidewalk. She stopped her car, concerned for their safety. They did not move. They waited - until the light turned red - and then they crossed." Our son Jimmy quipped: "I will really worry when I see one push the change button." That's right out of a Gary Larson "Far-Side" cartoon.

Jim and I were stopped in traffic on a neighborhood cross street last week. We noticed a fawn standing in a yard near our car - eyeing the foliage. Then the young deer saw lunch - a thick stand of orange daylilies growing along a weathered wooden fence. She glided over, sniffed, and then began daintily biting off one blossom at a time, carefully chewing it and then moving to the next. She looked so natural, so adorable!

Remember The Yearling? Wasn't this Gregory Peck's dilemma in that movie?