Landscaping with deer

My deer are denuding my rhododendrons and I could care less. Every year I obsess over winter damage on those plants, and this year I'm going to let the deer eat them, and cut them back to nothing. If they come back, fine. If they don't, oh well. The only thing I'll regret is that there's less for the deer to eat next year. Well, and yes, I do think about the person who planted them once. Were they placed there just because they looked pretty? Were they planted in someone's memory, or moved from some loved other-home? I feel badly destroying the product of someone's hard work. But nonetheless, away they go.

I've resolved that things that produce unnecessary stress need to go, unless the stress is offset by the utility or beauty that it produces. And it occurred to me that, while I enjoy driving by other people's houses and seeing their rhodies in bloom, I seldom pay attention to mine. Just "oh look, they are blooming" and then suddenly they are gone.

Chomp away, dear deer. They are all yours.

On the other hand, I've netted the two Canadian hemlocks planted in the cat garden, which were intended to replace the white pines that will one day need to be cut down. I hope they weren't damaged too much to recover.

I don't want to be at war with my wildlife. I do realize that I'm going to have to do some serious fence work this spring if I wish to be a serious farmer. There is no sense in applying sprays, etc. The only thing that really addresses the deer situation is a damned good fence (improved, perhaps by a good dog).

Sprays are worthwhile for ornamentals, like hostas, that are not practical to fence. However if you are going to put in a veggie garden in central NYS, don't think a few metal posts and some chicken wire are going to protect your hard work.

Goal for next spring: A) put two strands of electric wire on the uphill fenced vegetable garden, and put hardware cloth around the bottom two feet to keep the small critters out as they can get through the current 2"x3" wire, and B) fence in a "small" (compared to the entire field) area on the flat for a public cutting garden.

I'll have the remaining flat plowed, and I'll likely plant some crop for the fun of it, realizing that I'll have a great deal of deer damage. Sweet corn? Sunflowers? Then I'll look toward a wire fence for the field down the road.

There is water constantly running out of a spring pipe on the OPPOSITE side of the road, a good twenty feet higher than my field below. Perfect for gravity-fed irrigation. I intend to talk to the town about what it would cost for me to put a pipe under the road. I'm sure it will be prohibitive, but it will be good to know should they ever decide to do drainage work on the road and are digging things up anyway.

There is also the future option of putting in terraces on the hill below the spring, and allowing the spring to irrigate a damp-ground plant garden, or even a natural water garden. Why pay money for electricity to drive a pump, when water is coming right out of the hillside?

I also have a steep hill on the field-side of the road. Is there a single spring on that hillside on my property? Of course not. Are there springs just sixty feet down across the neighbor's property line? Of course.