For the uninitiated, Peggy Martin is an incredibly tough, not to say indestructible, climber who came to fame after surviving 2 weeks under water following Hurricane Katrina. Her reputation for strength is what drew me to her, but of course it didn't hurt that she was gorgeous. I loved her when I met her and I love her now. But lately, all we do is argue. 

Those were the days. Today, Peggy is no longer interested in being a prop in my twisted English garden magazine fantasies. On the contrary, she seems to be showing, if I may borrow a phrase from Miss Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, "an abominable sort of conceited independence."  Nobody tells her what to do. 

So I tried it. I applied it to new growth beginning in late February (early spring in Raleigh, North Carolina). Now, as the daylily buds have showed their tempting little faces, the verdict is in. Can this garden be saved? I'll let the pictures tell the story.

May 28, 2018 and here's what's being eaten: asiatic lilies (no bulb protection, it seems), daylilies, sedum, aster, phlox, and lately, the monarda (yes, the deer eat my bee balm). On the plus side, the buttonbush has been nipped but should actually bloom for the first time ever. The heuchera and turtlehead have mostly been left alone and the vernonia is more in tact than it was in past years. Another positive: it looks as if the repellent has actually been pretty effective against rabbits, since most of the damage I'm seeing - even on the asters - is from deer. 

So go ahead and try it - it may be the answer to your prayers. If you've been gardening for more than 10 minutes you understand that the repellent (systemic or otherwise) that works like a dream in Garden A. can be a flop in Garden B.  ​Sadly, I have Garden B.

Southerners like to say that "you can't fix stupid," but I'm here to prove "Oh yes you can." Enough is enough. I surrender.

Here's the kicker (and I swear I am not making this up): Just after I made this decision, I got a bona fide Sign From On High, straight out of the Bible's Baby Moses story. 

A newborn fawn spent yesterday hiding out in my perennial sunflower.  Now when a mother deer thinks your garden is a good spot to leave her baby while she runs some errands, someone is trying to tell you something.

​Salt lick, anyone?

I'm sick of my shtick.

That whole "galloping horses will never see it" and "imperfection is part of my charm" thing is getting old. Failure is no longer funny. I want a nice garden and I want it now.

It's been a challenging summer here in Raleigh, what with blazing heat, no rain, and a grasshopper/locust/chewing-insect-from-outer-space infestation. My garden is now at a whole new level of goddawful. 

The sad thing is, I was feeling pretty good about the garden (and myself, by extension) when I went to DC in June for my very first Garden Bloggers Fling. I had a great time, except for the part where my self-esteem suffered a blow from which it has not yet recovered.  "Is this inspirational or depressing?" a fellow blogger asked me as we surveyed an impossibly beautiful garden.  "Depressing," I said. Inspirational is when something is within the realm of possibility.

I'd really like to be a gardener, but I'm not.  At best I'm a grower. In a good year, that is. And this is not a good year.

Take my front yard (please).  Since deliberately smothering the grass and ripping out the boring foundation hollies three years ago, I've been trying to create something that passers-by would actually see and think "garden." No luck. I have been unable to figure out what will grow in such a fiendish exposure - north facing but with morning shade and blazing hot afternoon sun, except for the parts closest to the house, which receive no light at all. Full sun plants don't flower well, partial shade plants fry. Oh, and the soil is lousy.

The summer has been an unmitigated disaster for this pathetic patch of property. In last two months, some mysterious leaf-devouring insect has decimated my Heucheras, turtlehead, and oregano "Aureum," making hash out of my latest foray into garden design. Then, on cue, came the demise of my dwarf weeping birch. It was a nice little tree and I commend the previous homeowner for his  taste in planting it. But a white barked birch in boiling hot North Carolina? What could possibly go wrong?

I could tell the tree didn't have long for this world, but since its main role was to provide shade for my Ghost and Japanese Painted Ferns - just about the only plants that had been doing well in this Summer of Death - I was hoping it would have the courtesy to hang on until cooler weather. Of course it chose to drop dead in July, when the average temperature is 95 degrees and 100 isn't unusual. Finding instant shade for the ferns was imperative, triple-digit temperatures be damned. 
​
Bear with me, I'm almost at the punchline.

My choices stank: kill the ferns by moving them in 95 degree heat, or kill them by leaving them to fry in their now much too sunny location. I chose Door Number 3 - give them 50-50 odds by planting a 5-gallon container-grown "Tonto" crape myrtle as a replacement for the birch. I derisively dubbed it my "I Give Up" tree, final proof that I was incapable of growing anything interesting or original and was reduced to planting the most overused tree in the south. Oh how the mighty are fallen, right? But it's pretty, fast-growing, practically indestructible and it adores the heat. At this stage I'll take it.

So last Saturday, I plopped Tonto into the hole lately occupied by the weeping birch.  Then I prayed. 

Today, as I write this, we are enjoying our fourth straight day of 95 degree-plus weather, with no end in sight. And guess what? Tonto objects. 

I give up. I really, really, really give up.

You can't help noticing Chinese Mayapple. The leaves are gigantic and sit perpendicular to the stalk, which makes the plant look like a green toadstool or something out of a fairy tale or Maurice Sendak story. In March it gets borderline-creepy dark red flowers that droop from underneath. ​And if you like this kind of thing, you're in luck, because unlike native Mayapple, the plant doesn't go dormant until September or so.

But who am I kidding? One of my favorite things about Chinese Mayapple is that it's unusual. I can't deny it - I enjoy having plants no one else in the neighborhood has. It's not my most admirable quality but it's also not one of my worst, so I've decided to live with it. ​

Dear GHG,

I have a problem. I'm always falling for the wrong plants. Oriental lilies, phlox, heucheras - everything that deer and rabbits love, I love too. I've tried Liquid Fence, I Must Garden, Wireless Deer Fence, cayenne pepper, Schmoogie's hair, rabbit netting, wire cloches, and a fishing line fence, and still my heart gets broken. The garden smells like rotten eggs and the plants look like they are in jail. My friends and family think I'm nuts and my shrink gave me a copy of Oh Grow Up Already: How to Stop Lusting After Lilies and Learn to Love the Boring, Dependable Plants That Bambi Would Never Look Twice At.  

I know it's messed up but I can't seem to stop.  What do you think? Am I wrong to hold out for what I truly want? Should I settle for spirea?
 
Signed,

Wretched in Raleigh

Dear Wretched,

Imprisoning your garden in chicken wire and fishing line is perfectly normal behavior and a small price to pay for having an Asiatic Lily like Pearl Jennifer actually bloom, even with a few bites taken out. ​

Fire your shrink. With the money you save, you could have a real fence installed. That fishing line fence of yours is joke and there are buds on Pearl Jennifer. 

Signed,

GHG

I'm back.

Where have I been? Well, shortly after my last post in July 2014, I started a new job. It's a very good job, objectively speaking, and I am lucky to have it blah blah blah. But until quite recently, it left me so drained that I was unable to even contemplate writing this blog.  Let's just say it's been an adjustment.

Partly it was the life-style change: I had been working primarily from home for almost 10 years, and all of a sudden I had to get up at 5:30 in the morning, put on decent clothes, brush my hair, and drive 25 miles each way in hideous traffic. If I were a plant, you would have said I had transplant shock.

I survived the transplant. That's the good news. The bad news is that I am not "the right plant in the right place." On the contrary, it has become increasingly obvious that, at my no-longer-new-job, I am precisely the wrong plant in the wrong place. I am a shade lover in full sun. A hellebore trying to be a rose.  Call me Phony Rose.

Hellebores like to work in the background. They hate being "on." They are realists, even pessimists, and they are prone to cynicism (I'll bet you didn't know that about hellebores). If you lie on your back and look up into their downward tilting flowers, you can see that they are rolling their eyes a little.

While hellebores may thrive on neglect, roses are always ready for their close-ups.  They practically scream "Look at me!" They are relentlessly enthusiastic and upbeat. They are experts at small-talk.  They say "awesome." 

Take it from me: it's hard to be a hellebore impersonating a rose. Phony Rose is "on" all the time. She is warm. She is eager to please.  She makes a gallant attempt at "bubbly". She sprinkles her emails with exclamation points, as if she were 12 years old, for crying out loud, then signs them "Best wishes" (hellebores prefer "Sincerely").  Frankly, she makes me sick.

And so I am giving my blog another go, as a much-needed antidote to my work alter-ego. It will be a relief to be me again.  Here I can say quite bluntly that my front yard has been a failure. That after 10-plus years of gardening, I am still hopeless when it comes to garden design and have yet to create a decent-looking container planting. That my neighborhood is overrun with deer and rabbits and between the two of them nothing in my garden is safe. That you can add snowdrops to the list of plants that in fact are not critter-proof.  That while I have always considered myself an animal lover, I am secretly rooting for the hawks. 

There. I'm feeling better already.