On Saturday, my friend Julie (Slipper Sistah) came over and helped me wash windows.  As you may recall, I had originally started washing windows back in May and proposed to finish the job using the “one window at a time” method.  Time got away from me and here we are less than one week to Moxie and my windows aren’t spring or summer cleaned.

I know.  When a summer festival attended by tens of thousands of people is barreling down on you like a runaway train, you wash windows, right?

It was fun to have some help and we completed the job in 3 hours.  After finishing, we went out in the garden and I pointed out different plants and flowers that were coming into bloom.  I found a very large weed on the edge of the yard, one of many similar weeds.  Julie said “oh, those weeds are like candy to deer.”

Julie is more “outdoorsy” than me.  She knows how to fish and she has probably gone hunting once or twice.  I believed her and I started thinking about how these “deer candies” might keep little Bambi away from my flowers.

Julie may be right and the weeds in question are like candy; unfortunately, the sunflowers I was growing were like heroin and the deer were unrepentant junkies last night.

I wept for a few minutes this morning and then inspected the garden for more damage.  Yes, they nibbled the Echinacea and the Nasturtiums and the Zinnias.  Handy thinks I’m a baby about my gardens; he says I don’t enjoy them because I spend so much time battling the bugs, critters, and weeds.  He says they live rent free in my head.  While it’s certainly true I get a little wound around the wheelbarrow axle from time to time, I wonder what the gardens would look like if I didn’t take a few precautions?  Mrs. Perron built the most magnificent gardens; it’s such a wonderful gift she left and I feel some responsibility to keep them at least as lovely as they were when she lived here.  If I can enhance them, it’s all the better.

After I changed out of my garden clothes and threw on my 2015 Moxie Festival t-shirt (we’re selling women’s v-necks this year, by the way), I headed to the garden store for deer repellant and chicken wire.  When I got home, I built some Rube Goldberg-like covers for certain parts of my garden and then started spraying the repellant.  It was a mighty putrid concoction, a combination of rotten eggs, garlic, and who knows what else.

I’ve tried talking sense to the deer when I’ve seen them in the gully behind the house, but it doesn’t do any good.

The smell was absolutely raunchy and I almost lost the Pepperidge Farm Piroutte rolled wafer I had just eaten.

I’m crossing my fingers that the repellant and chicken wire keeps the deer away.  It might just make little Bambi barf, too.

Good.