Verticality!

It's the newest buzz word in the gardening world - "Verticality".
I suspect that it's just a spin off of the current trend for Green Walls , and Green Roofs. Time was, a green roof was just some lonely, untended roof space that the mosses had moved in on, and the weeds had taken over. And now, people (some really smart people, too) are taking those unused walls, and empty roof spaces and deliberately planting all sorts of stuff. Ferns. Flowers. Vines. Cactus. Vegetables.
I have several empty walls/trellises in the Back 40, spaces with no redeeming features, but where the sun does shine, the birds hang out and most importantly, the deer can't reach!
One such trellis, hanging under the small deck where we feed the birds & squirrels, faces south-east. Good morning sun should make this space fit for some flowering vines to feed the bees, and hopefully attract a few butterflies.

In all the years that I've worked in this garden, I've only seen a few moths, and one Monarch, high in the tree branches.
So this is the plan:
1. Move the variegated Ivy from the shed to this trellis.
2. Find a Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervivens) to plant at the foot of the trellis.
3. Move the sedums from the front and side yard to this space.
4. Plant some blue salvias (deer don't like these), and some blue Bachelor Button seedlings (not sure how these will fare).
5. Make a small mud puddle under the trellis for the butterflies.

Did I miss anything?

Well, with a bit of sun, some compost and some luck there will be Butterfly Spotting happening in my yard this summer.

Rainy Fridays

This is what I walk past each time I leave the house.
The remnants of my green mean vines from last summer.
They looked so good last summer, even after the slow start
during our cold, wet spring.
I sprayed them faithfully with pepper spray, and managed to
keep those pesky deer away for many weeks.
We had lovely green beans, and purple beans.
Then, in late August, the rains came, and I missed my regular
pepper spray routine, and that was the last of the beans.

Those pests were really sneaky about picking the beans, too.
I would notice a handful of pods, ready to pick, and then come
out later that day or the next morning, and find nothing.
Except for the pods that grew at the top of the teepees (~ 6 feet up),
those deer managed to find each lovely bean.
By the end of September, they were eating all the leaves as well.

So now, as I plan this years veggies, I'm thinking barbed wire,
motion-controlled sprinklers or maybe remay cloth tents.

Any suggestion?
I'm definitely listening.

We're Being Invaded!

But this invader is such a pretty little thing. It creeps along, never needs any care, flowers each Spring, doesn't get eaten by the deer. In short, a perfect woodland plant for difficult spaces.
This lovely little Lamium escaped from the neighbour's yard. It crept along the side of their hedge, then sprinted around the back of their Garden Shed and headed across my lot. At first,I paid no attention to it, as there were more urgent matters to deal with (alders, deer, bears, drought, rocks, crows), but now it's covering about 75 square feet of my back yard. It's pushing through my hedgerow, threatening the rhodos and covering up the little red huckleberry bushes that I planted in one of the few sunny patches in my yard.
I really don't want to tear out this whole patch of green, as I have nothing to replace it with. But it is listed as one of the Invasive species in our area, and I'm beginning to see it everywhere, especially in our parks and along the local streams.
So I'm going to compromise (the easy way out). I'll keep it chopped back, behind my hedgerow, and let it have that back corner.
But only until I find a new tenant.

This may take a while.