Trying to get some yard work done on Tuesday was quite a chore with all the smoke that was around. I couldn’t believe reading the weather forecast on Monday at Thunder 102 that Tuesday we were going to have an air quality alert from smoke from wildfires in Nova Scotia and Quebec. 

Prevailing winds brought the smoke down from the Canadian maritimes and it was strange to see the orange hue in the sky almost all day. The local news has almost no coverage of these events so I had to check out news and videos on the internet about the wildfires and the amount of square miles that have already burnt in just Nova Scotia and Quebec equal to that of Rhode Island. And that is not the only places in Canada that are on fire, Alberta and British Columbia also have many out of control wildfires from early season heat and extremely dry conditions. I was digging in my front yard yesterday and besides all the rocks that were coming out of the holes, the dirt, or should I say clay, was just powder. 

And I had some piles of dirt from some landscaping I did last week and the clay chunks in the pile had hardened up so much that I had to break them apart with a rock. It is no wonder that the native Lenape Indians in the area had no problem making pottery from our clay soil. Speaking of landscaping, I planted shrubs in my front flowerbed in front of our new house. Now being in Eldred I knew we were going to have a lot of deer around, my dogs chase them every morning and night, but these deer are something else. They are eating every deer resistant plant that I have put around my house, in some cases less than two feet outside my bedroom window. I am surprised I did not hear them chewing. Spirea, huechera, bee balm, they have eaten it all, so now I got some coyote urine and hopefully that will keep them away. Just to be sure, I brought home some dried blood as well. 

Dried blood works well as a deer repellent too but it washes into the soil once it rains, but since we have no rain in the forecast, I figured why not. Dried blood is typically used as an organic nitrogen fertilizer anyway so even if it does wash in, it will just fertilize my poor deer-chewed plants anyway. The thing that I cannot wrap my head around is that these plants have been sitting in pots for three weeks in my front yard and were not touched once, yet the day that I planted them, the deer came that night to eat them. To me that sounds like a deer sending me a message, I’ll eat what I want, when I want and what are you going to do about it? I had deer in Swan Lake, but they didn’t give me attitude like this. If need be, my dogs Lily and Pebbles said they would be happy to sleep on the front porch just waiting for the deer to show up, but I would have to sleep out there with them and that’s not gonna happen. So for now I’ll just see how the coyote urine and dried blood do. I will have to say, one plant that I planted, a Mountain Fire Andromeda was left alone as well as an Arctic and Dappled Willow, but they are still in pots on the lawn. 

My kennel fencing is still holding up strong protecting my garden, but due to the ferocity of these deer I think I am going to put some bird netting across the top too, just in case they decide they want to jump the fence. I have given advice for years to customers that have battled deer like this before and now it is my turn to heed my own advice. I’ll definitely keep you posted if the deer continue to be a nuisance. Getting back to the smoke we had on Tuesday, the wildfire danger this season is going to be higher than most years. Our extremely dry weather and breezy conditions are prime for backyard burns gone wrong by hot embers getting blown into the woods, a neighbor’s leaf pile, wood pile or any other dry fuel source. So even though the burn ban is no longer in force in New York, only burn on calm days and keep an ample water source nearby.