First Flower of Spring: Under High Level Security

Last fall Dr. Peds pulled out some prickly crawling bushes that had been nothing but trouble for us since we moved into our house four years ago.  In place of the nasty bushes, he planted tulips, crocuses, and maybe some daffodils ( I can’t quite remember).  He planted lots and lots of bulbs.  I have been skeptical of the whole idea.  It’s not that I don’t love spring bulb flowers.  I adore tulips and crocuses and daffodils.  However, there is an extreme urban deer problem in my city.  There are small herds of deer that roam the streets at night.  They have completely adapted to their urban habitat.  They even look both ways before crossing the street in the middle of the day.  It is utterly ridiculous.  The deer roam around all the time, and while kind of pretty, they are a pestilence in people’s yards.  They eat everything.  They especially eat green leaves and flowers in the spring.  They aren’t a bit afraid of people.  You can walk up to them and approach them and nearly pet them before they move. And when they move they just sort of lolly daddle away slowly.  Even screaming kids racing bikes down the sidewalk do not faze them.  They just keep on munching away.

So, I was certain that the deer were going to munch right through all the flowers, but Dr. Peds was proactive. He put up a tall fence with netting around the tiny flowerbed the second the snow melted, and sure enough, two days later up popped the crocuses:  probably ten of them.  The deer haven’t gotten through the netting yet and we actually have a few that are blooming.  The netting is quite flimsy, but maybe the deer will latch onto someone else’s flowers.  It would really be nice to actually see a blooming tulip or two.  The poor tiny crocuses look kind of ridiculous in their cage, but we are enjoying them anyway.