I have issues, you know....

                                               

                          This is a bad, bad thing. Do you have this thing? 

Aw. So sweet, right??!! 

I disagree. 

this bad thing and it's friends are big trouble for me. I am limited by what can be planted in the back of the yard, in consideration of what this thing will eat. I have issues. Well, not me, but my landscape. Issues I have to deal with, make concessions to. Just to be able to grow something, ANYTHING!, I have to mind the issues that constrain me!

Plague #1 Snow. (or, as I call it-THE WHITE DEATH!!) 

I find this issue very limiting. I know folks who get misty eyed during the first snow fall. Not me. No way, no sir. I dread the stuff. I hate winter and always have. Snow makes nothing better and worse, it brings cold. Snow and cold. I must be nuts to live here. 

Plague #2

Grasshoppers. So, the snow is not challenging enough. I get grasshoppers. Seriously?? How do you kill grasshoppers? Turns out, chickens might eat grasshoppers, but they aren't their favorite and anyways, I have Schatz the WonderDog and she loves chicken. Grasshoppers eat everything. 

Except snow and deer.

Plague #3

Japanese Beetles. 

Insert cuss words here. Once upon a time, I was deathly afraid of those little white "C" shaped larvae. I would get it off my shovel and stomp on the ground till it was smeared and gone. That was then. 

This is war. Now, I can smoosh the larvae between my thumb and forefinger.

I'm just cool like that. 

Plague #4

The tomato hornworm. 

The first time I saw one of these things, I fell backwards into the compost pile trying to get away from it.

Seriously, look at that sharp pointy thing on it's posterior!!!

We were living in Memphis and had just come back from 10 day vacation. I walked out to my garden, expecting large tomatoes and big peppers. Instead, I found tomato plants without a single leaf. Green tomatoes hung from the naked tomato branches. I had never seen such a thing in my entire life!! I looked and looked for clues of this devestation. I held the tomato branches in my hand, staring in disbelief at this terrible situation when I felt something squirm under my hand. That's when I spotted them. My plants were literally crawling with these things. I had never seen it before and thought surely it was the Madagascar Hissing Cockroach that would usher me thru the Pearly Garden Gates if it stung me. In my terror, I jumped up to get away, lost my balance and fell backwards into the compost bin. No joke, I ran into the house crying, freaked out beyond belief. 

Plague #5

Do I need to even go into this guy?? Perhaps adding the evil red eye was a bit immature, but nyah nyah na boo-boo, I don't care.

But you know, I have been reading your blogs and I want garden rooms and pathways, too! I have limited my planting to the area closest to the house, but I am not going to limit myself anymore. I have done my research and I am ready to go to battle with the deer issue. Not much I can do about snow, beetles or grasshoppers, but I can arm myself with plants that deer won't eat. I can try, anyways.

Artemisia, 'Silver Brocade'

Flame Grass

I have many others, but the formatting glitches are driving me nuts! So, I am going to bed. I am not fooling around with the lawn, either. I am round upping a kidney shaped chunk of my backyard tomorrow. When the lawn is dead, I will plant my perennials. I also have 2 Sunburst Honey Locust. Now, if any of you have any indication that the deer will eat my plant selections, you have a blogger responsibility to tell me. 

Plus, I am asking for a gun for my birthday.....