Surrender - Never!

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."  Winston Churchill

Although it looks like we are surrendering, we are not!   We awoke on the 18th to the telltale signs that the deer had returned to graze in our fair garden.  We realized that we had been pushing the 'temptation meter' to high when we planted the tulips last fall but the pictures on the packaging were so pretty we couldn't resist.  (There's that 'temptation - resistance' theme again.)  Barry had read that installing white flags was a deterent so up they went in the tulip beds. Our reading lead us to believe that deer prefer not to eat any of the 'smelly' flowers from bulbs so we mostly planted narcissi, alliums, hyacinths, and fritillaria. We planted a few unusual oxalis versicolour, which apparently are quite rare, but we have seen no sign of their emergence.  We will continue to watch as they are late season bloomers.  I will post a picture of them once they have emerged.  We were quite fearful that our asian pear trees had been stripped of their new leaves (that's what had happened to them at Springtime Nursery, where we purchased them) but the deer apparently crossed over into our neighbour's yard instead of heading out back.  Whew!

We continue to keep constant watch over those seeds already in the ground...the early potatoes are pushing up through the soil as are the Andy's Broad Beans.  The barley and peas are strong growers, and tiny spinach and carrots are showing.  The garlic must have liked the straw and grass mulch, sun, and rain as they have grown like weeds lately.