Deer me!

We had to dress our baby trees. Deer have been rutting and destroying the delicate bark of the trunk. I forgot to take a "before" picture of the two trees now covered up, but here is an example of a third, a tulip tree, that still needs wrapping. Stupid deer. Eating our bulbs and hostas and now this:

Both our precious new maples are now sporting these lovely plastic wraps to help protect them. Hopefully there's no permanent damage.

In other yard news, besides the constant battle with leaves, we have begun setting up for a vegetable garden! While this isn't exactly planting season, we figured it was a good time to start turning over the soil and building the gates (to protect from bunnies and deer as noted above).  This is really more a project for grandma and her grandbabies, so D and I didn't even have to do much of the work! Here you can see some straight lines made of string to help get the fencing straight followed by the completed garden. We also rototilled some of the soil, though we'll do another round this spring and have a truckload of compost delivered to help fertilize the area. I can't wait to send the kids out to bring back a crop.

And finally, we have new decorative grasses growing along our property line, also from grandma. They looked totally dead when we planted them (you can still see the brown dead grass blades), but the green grass and fronds popped out when we weren't paying attention and they are very much alive. We're hoping it forms a fence of sorts to separate us from the empty lot and give our backyard some privacy from the street.