Last week on this day I wrote about how I was happy and pleased because we had planted some true blue pansies by the sidewalk leading up to our front door. Today I am saddened to tell you, my gentle readers, that last Friday night the deer ate 70% of my special, pretty pansies.
Apparently the deer were having their very own T.G.I.F. party out in front of our house. And they didn’t even invite us. SNOBS.
This experience reminds me of a Bible verse: “Pride goeth before Destruction, and Haughtiness goeth before the Fall.”
[Don’t know where that is in the Bible, but I know it’s there. My mother used to say that every so often. While not a church lady by any stretch of the imagination, she knew all sorts of Bible quotes that she used, along with French phrases + literary quotes, to keep me on the straight and narrow. Or to confuse me, thereby slowing me down as I sauntered along the crooked and wide.]
So yesterday morning Z-D and I went to Lowe’s to buy some average, run-of-the-mill pansies. We bought one 6-pack of pansies with yellow/brown faces and one 6-pack of pansies with purple/white faces. We came home and planted them all mixed-up with the remaining true blue pansies that the deer were too full to eat.
THEN Zen-Den gave the whole mess of pansies a thorough spraying with Liquid Fence, Deer & Rabbit Repellent. Or as I call it– the deer stink stuff.
All of which means that our flowers look lovely from afar, but smell icky when you walk by them. I believe that Fernando Lamas would approve of this solution to our deer/pansy problem. In fact, I can imagine him saying that it is better to look good than it is to smell good.
Yes, my pansies: “You look MAHVELOUS!”
[There’s more to the story. Click here.]
They have a repellant that works on both deer and rabbits? Does that mean it also works on other mammals like dogs and cats?
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la p, the bottle that we have says “deer & rabbits” on the front of it. I have no idea if it works for dogs & cats as we have neither. All I care about is trying to give my pansies a fighting chance to root before winter arrives. Poor babies!
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Okay, I am mad at those deer! Sheesh! I would have been disappointed too – I love Pansies and Johnny-Jump-Ups (that look like baby Pansies to me). Well I hope that repellent works! I hate to have to use chemicals (plus I always kind of feel bad for the animals), on the other hand, if they had asked (nicely) to have a nibble, maybe you could have planted a few (non-special) Pansies for their enjoyment. 🙂
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Kristen, thank you for your support. I know what you mean about not wanting to use chemicals, but desperate times & all that. I would gladly plant a whole pansy buffet around back of the house for the deer– if I could get them to understand that the pansies out front were off limits!
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I love deer, but they are a nuisance. We don’t have any around here, but we have some destructive slugs!
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Margaret, we have a few slugs occasionally. Aren’t you supposed to serve them beer to kill them? Or maybe it’s that you drink a lot of beer and then you no longer care that the slugs are destroying your flowers!
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Ally, I have read that human hair strewn around the plants will keep deer away, something about the smell of humans. In a similar vein, I have also read that human pee sprinkled around also repels deer, but I imagine Zen Den wouldn’t be willing to assist in that fashion!
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Voyager, I’ve not heard of either of those solutions. Human hair might not be a bad idea, but as for the other idea… ICK! [Of course, you knew that I was going to reject the last one, didn’t you? 😉]
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