Tulips fall prey to deer and spring rains

It's Friday, the first day of May and it's raining.

I have enjoyed my tulips for almost a week now...

A line from one of my in progress poems currently reads...

["drinking

tulips clink blush red cups

fall over in the rain"] (Eli)

This year at least I saw some tulips. I surrounded them with daffodils to hide them from the grazing deer. They love to eat tulips.



In this picture you can see Whisper who insists she is not the culprit who broke this stem.

In all likelihood it was Munchie. This tulip had the misfortune of being planted next to the catmint. Munchie can't help but roll around on it. He insists he's protecting it. I insist he's smothering it.

In the front garden I tend to stick to the lavendars, pinks, whites etc. offsetting the yellow and cream daffodils.

In the main back garden where we get full sun, I planted a mix of colors and bloom times. early spring, mid spring,late spring etc.

They are in the second layer of the border and intermixed between the summer bulbs and irises to protect them from curious doe. It was a risk but it seems to have paid off. The risk being that the deer might "step" into the garden to find them and harm other plants.

Anyway, I lost some tulips on the border but not many. Much better than last year.

And in this last garden under the pink dogwood, a garden which I have been slowly deconstructing, the tulips have arisen with a new fierceness. They will not be defeated.

It's inevitable I suppose that where I want to plant them the deer notice them. And where I want to move them from, the deer leave them unnoticed.

Now as a point of fact, I don't mind sacrificing a few tulips to the deer. I don't even mind that they eat them, really. It's a game. Find the tulips.




For the most part we learn that if we want to see spring bulbs bloom plant daffodils. We accept this. We may plant tulips. But after that, it's out of our hands.

I point you to the last line of one of my pieces is something my mother said to me the spring before she passed away... She was referencing the rain more than the deer when she said it after finding her front garden tulips beaten and battered by showers.

["This fall," she instructs, "plant
daffodils. They bloom so much
longer than the tulips" ]

I'm off to the opera. Have a great night! Eli