Peter's New Fence

You might recall that Peter has declared a bit of a war with the local deer population. (If you don't recall, and actually even if you do, I'd suggest you review this post which shows a video of Peter's ingenious deer battling tactics. It makes me laugh every time.)



In our first spring at our house, Peter tilled up a special plot for a garden. We'd seen a few deer when we moved in in February, but hadn't seen them in quite awhile. At Peter's parents' house, the deer come down in the winter, but in the summer they go elsewhere. So, since we hadn't seen them lately, we'd assumed they gone to their summer vacation home. (Classic example of "wishful thinking.")



So, his garden was all planted. The little veggy plants were starting to poke their little green tendrils above the soil.

And then it happened.

Memorial Day morning, Peter walked out to the garden and found deer tracks all over the place! They'd clearly gotten the message that Peter's Garden Buffet was open for business.

This was an emergency.



So, off to Home Depot we ran for whatever we could get that we could put up that very day. And a lot of cash and lot of hours later, we'd completed our garden deer fence. It wasn't elegant, but it was enough to keep those deer away from my cherry tomatoes!



The fence was only 5 feet tall though. Certainly short enough for a deer to jump if he was really motivated. And for 6 years, they weren't motivated. But last summer, on one night when the gate was mistakenly left open...one brave little deer ventured in and discovered what they had been missing! After that it was a fence-jumping bonanza. They'd come leaping in just for a little midnight snack. Ack.



So, this is the year that Peter is building the mother of all deer fences. Those deer have met their match this time.