deer update

I've posted a few times about the damage the deer do to my garden, my roses, and other plants in the yard, but I admit, it's hard to stay mad at the little ones.

As Nancy and I go for an evening stroll, we spot the two young ones checking out my antique machinery display. We see their momma close by and the three of them eventually scurry off into the trees.

But only a minute later they appear a few yards to our left. They aren't too frightened. They know their momma outweighs us.

Mother and twins check out the plant life on the community drain field. 

Then they move on to see what kind of plant life the neighbor's place has to offer.

Pictures by Nancy A. Fredrickson

Garden Gate Rhymes

Memories swing on the Garden Gate:

See the young mother working late?

See children learning, yearning to please?

“I’m sorry, Mom. I hoed out some peas!"

Note: See garden gate in lower right,

Behind the weeds but still in sight.

Now I ask, “What use is the rusty, old gate?”

“Should we toss it out?” My wife screams, “Wait!

Let’s make for it a better fate.”

I say, "To hang it in the garden makes no sense.
Can't have a garden gate without a garden fence?"

"Sure we can," Nanc  says to me.
And now that it's hung, I have to agree!
The gate stands proud for us to see
Near daisies and lilies and an apple tree.













And a practical use we also found 
Was to keep the hoe up off the ground.
It's the place Mom hung her hoe away
When she quit work at the end of the day.

In autumn we replace the hoe
With a not-too-scary scarecrow.

In winter's cold the garden gate
Provides a place to decorate.
In bright white snow of a winter scene,
we place a wreath of red and green.

Mom loved a garden, green and dense,

And in final years there was no fence.

At 75 years she worked that ground

And ate the harvest all year round.

The gate still hung on posts of old

That I "helped" Dad erect, I'm told.

Memory: Drilling into freshly cut white oak posts by hand with a rusty brace and a dull bit, Dad made slow progress, but by shear strength and determination, he bore two holes large enough to screw the hinges into. 

This closeup shows the hinge in a hole I drilled into a
treated post using an electric drill about 60 years after
Dad  had mounted the gate on the oak post.

American Basswood

Soft leaves the size of a man's hand, blossoms that fill the warm June air, and broad spreading branches make the American Basswood, or Linden, a great shade tree.

American Basswoods, about ten years after being transplanted from the wild

Memory:

I follow my father as he uses the big scythe to cut the tall weeds near the garden. I want to help but I am too little to handle the scythe.
"Stay back or go back to the house!" he says to me a second time.
I follow at a safe distance, stepping over stiff weed stubble. Mosquitoes fly into my ears and nose. I use my cap to swat them away. Dad stops to use his cap to swat mosquitoes and I suddenly see him grin widely, inhale deeply, and then grin even wider.
"Smell that, Son? That's the big basswood in blossom."
I inhale deeply the sweet, heavy fragrance until I taste the odor in my mouth.
"Come here, once," he says and I follow him a short distance. Together we stare at the tree's blossoms, thick with honey bees.
"It makes great honey," he confides to me.

Several years ago when we knew the farmstead would be replaced by a development, my wife Nancy and I struggled to dig out a few small basswoods from that same space where the big one used to stand. We planted them in our yard and now every June I inhale that same sweet, heavy fragrance until I taste the odor in my mouth.

Bees have finished with the blossoms, but the fragrance remains strong.

Left on their own in the wild, the American Basswood will usually have multiple trunks.

These two were transplanted about the same time as the trees in the top pictures, but these were not pruned to one trunk.

Sure, I know fancy landscapers and city planners prefer to plant the European version with its smaller leaves and tighter crown, but I prefer the big, handsome American Basswood to the Little Leaf Linden.

I guess it's just my history.

Photographs by Nancy A. Fredrickson