Summertime battles: Report from the frontline in Columbia

 

    It's Summertime and that means it is a return to my annual battle with deer and their interest in eating all the plants in my yard.  As you can see from the pictures above I am still losing the battle this year.  These plants all had flowers until a few days ago.  Even the deer repellent pellets from Home Depot seem to have minimal effect.  Maybe a scare crow next??

    They are even nice enough to leave evidence of their presence as shown above.

     My other battle of course is with my lawn.  I hate grass as previous blogs have expressed.  Each year my plan is still to eliminate the yard my home builders laid down with the house.  I consider grass to be an invasive weed that needs mowing weekly right now.  Below is still the amount of grass clippings I have with each mowing.

        My little 1/5th acre still has way too much lawn for my taste.  When I travel to the western part of our County and see the large lawns surrounding the homes I shake my head and wonder why anyone would want a lawn large enough to require a tractor to mow.  Damn those English aristocracy for the development of lawns.

    On a another topic my desire to bring a little of the tropics to my yard have been largely a failure.  Below is the carcass of my winter hardy palm tree.

   So much for Columbia's mild winters. 

     At first I thought that my banana tree had also not survived the winter but the picture above shows it beginning to grow.  It should be 3 or 4 feet high by now but at least some of it survived.

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