Thru The Eyes Of A Deer

We had another great day of weather today. Sorry, no post yesterday as I took the day off to hang out with my younger daughter. Lots of work accomplished yesterday including much progress on our impromptu, informal deer fencing seen above. The guys have done a nice job protecting our arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) hedging that has been decimated over the past three winter seasons. Snow fence has it's merit although we wonder if these barriers will encourage our resident deer to "expand their palette"? Ugh. In some instances, the snow fence is two sections high (seen below) or we're using additional wire to keep them from going under or over one level of fencing. We'll see how effective it is but I certainly appreciate all the effort (and expense!) that has gone in to this endeavor.
We had a small crew today with Marv gone and no Larry or Little Jerry. Terry worked on setting up more trees for decoration and bounced between various "last minute" preparations for the lights show. Marianne continued to haul out lights for our work day tomorrow and also spread greens, ran cords and tidied up here and there. Janice worked on gardening projects, the last of our bulb planting (help from Marianne) and helped Terry as well. Kay came in to garden for the last time this year and didn't disappoint us with her multiple loads of debris from the color rooms and Scottish garden. Dr. Gredler and Vern were here to work on some projects including more soil work to level out an area near the main road. We also saw Bev, Deb and Maury over here today for various reasons. Next week is both joyous and sad. We'll be celebrating the set-up of our lights show after many weeks of work but most of the grounds folk (with the exception of Little Jerry and Larry) will finish until next April. Marv, Marianne, Janice and Terry did an awesome job this year and we look forward to their continued involvement at RBG. I was running cords by our oakleaf hydrangeas (Hydrangea quercifolia) and noted the wide variability of fall color that is certainly dependent on sun exposure. The image shows fall color from left (most sun) to right (least sun). Interesting. Beneath that photo are some others I took today and was happy to see continued interest this late in November. The kale (Brassica sp.) is still looking good but note the little green caterpillars (in center) still munching on the purple one! At the bottom is the annual Mexican feather grass (Stipa tenuissima) that still is contributing as it dies a slow death.