One of our most frequently asked questions is if we have a problem with deer. I can very clearly remember being able to say cheerfully, “No – we don’t!” Even though when I said it I always crossed my fingers and knocked wood, and always had compassion for other gardeners’ woes and tried not to gloat, over the last probably 5 or so years, I’m now sorry to say that the deer have finally clued in that this is prime real estate. They have nosed around our tulips eating a few buds here and there, tromped through garden beds as if they were pathways, munched hosta like salad greens and sampled a few shrubs and vines, but nothing (yet – knock wood) has been completely demolished. I know we’re very lucky.

That said, this fall a buck moved in. He has marked his territory like a cat does, though much more destructively, by rubbing his antlered scent glands on a few young trees. And of course this doesn’t do the trees any good at all. He has scraped clear through the bark to the tender cambium, wrecking the tree’s ability to transport water from the roots to its leaves. If he had rubbed around the circumference, the trees would surely die. As it is they may not be able to fully recover and thrive and some are young enough that even a little damage is too much, sadly.

I caught the blurry Sasquatch-like shot of our fellow leaving the property around mid-day. That’s an unusual time for a sighting but I think he may have been flushed from his bed by the machinery (if not the machinations) of Fred and Dan blowing leaves near the summerhouse. I know they are worried about Blithewold’s trees and would be glad to see the backside of our buck, gone for good.

Do you have a problem with deer in your garden too?

The closer it gets to the holidays – and as the weather slides to the darkest, coldest time of year, the more I think about food. I know I’m not alone. Birds are hungry too. We don’t hang feeders here – there would be no way to keep up with them not to mention we’d need a separate and sizable budget to fund them. But we do offer a few natural breakfast buffets in the gardens and grounds. And after walking around looking for bird food, I have a whole new list of plants that I know need in my own starving garden.

Rather than cut everything back for the winter we leave some seedheads – like rudbeckia and echinacea – in the gardens because they are goldfinch favorites. Seed-eating birds also enjoy certain grasses like the Panicum virgatum ‘Heavy Metal’ planted at the Carriage House (matching the color of the cedar shingles exactly right now) as well as the goldenrod growing wild at the edge of the Bosquet.

Cedar waxwings love their namesake eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana). I had a hard time finding berries to photograph, perhaps because the birds have already come through, or the squirrels got there first, or maybe it just wasn’t a good year for berries with all the heat and drought. I wonder too about the bayberry (Myrica pensylvanica) because I couldn’t find a single berry on any of our plants (and I’m sure we have some females among them). The waxy fruit ripens in September (I have to admit I’ve never paid attention then) and it’s possible birds – any of dozens of different varieties – found them long before I looked. Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) and Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) berries are already stripped too.

Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) and crabapples (Malus sp. – especially ones with very small fruit like ‘Prairifire’) are into-winter favorites for a lot of different birds. The fruit has to freeze and thaw before being soft enough to gobble up, which gives us gardeners a chance to glean some (visual) sustenance too during our darkest, starved-for-color season.

I know this is a short list – I didn’t touch the viburnums… What do you have in your garden that birds love to eat this time of year and through the winter?

I’m definitely on a fragrance kick lately. I don’t know if it’s that my nose is compensating for my other senses – I’m near sighted and I don’t always hear too well… Or if it’s just that it’s June and June smells really beautiful.

I have been walking through curtains of scent all over the property and have continued sticking my nose into every bloom to find the sources. Some are obvious – like the sweet peas. They happen to be one of the only flowers I’m willing to cut from my own garden to bring inside just so I can draw in every last whiff of them.

Lilah I think would be happy to take home a bouquet of her declared favorite rose, ‘Sweet Juliet’. Its scent is heavy enough to knock me right over but I can certainly smell why it might be anyone’s favorite.

I keep asking Gail if she can smell the linden trees  – in full bloom here now – and am amazed that she doesn’t much notice it. Even though there are lindens all over the property, Lilah and I took a little break the other day in the Linden Grove (Tilia cordata – Littleleaf lindens) just to twirl in the honey scent, and majesty of those trees.

Aside from the scent of them, which admittedly some people hardly notice, the linden flowers are pretty unimpressive. On the other hand, catalpa (Catalpa speciosa) flowers are amazing to look at but, according to my snifter, are kind of empty, fragrance-wise.

And for a flower that is both amazing to look at and has an intoxicating fragrance, nothing beats a night blooming cereus. It finally dawned on me that if I (and you through me) were ever going to experience an open flower, I’d have to bring a plant home. I took the pictures at about 10:30pm but I did notice that at least one of the (3) buds had started to open at dusk. – Does anyone know, is that when they typically open? I thought it was only after dark… In any case, it wasn’t very fragrant then or early the next morning. But in the dark, it was definitely a  “wow!” If only you could smell it too…

Can you smell the lindens? What’s fragrant in your garden? For a look, if not a sniff, at what’s blooming all over the world right now, check out Garden Bloggers Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens.

The air smells so pervasively sweet right now that it’s almost hard to identify which plants are producing all the fragrance. I have now stuck my nose in so many flowers, it’s probably a wonder I haven’t had an asthma attack or been stung by any annoyed bees.

There are a couple of easily identifiable, all encompassing scents right now – you can’t set foot or nostril in Rhode Island right now without catching a powerful whiff of roses. Rosa multiflora – an invasive plague – smells almost as wildly spiced as the slightly less aggressive beach rose (Rosa rugosa). Beach rose is  my favorite scent in the whole world especially when combined with a sea-salty breeze. So I’m in heaven right now. The fancier roses in the Rose Garden all have distinctly different scents – some almost cloyingly perfumed and some exactly like apricots. And I’m still trying to identify the tropical fruit I ate as a kid that peonies smell just like the taste of…

And around the property there are all sorts of  fragrances both heavenly and heavy. I’ve never before noticed the Kentucky yellowwood (Cladrastis kentuckea ‘Sweet Shade’) in bloom – maybe because I am tethered to the gardens in June. But it smells pleasantly almond-y sweet to Lilah and me. The climbing hydrangea on the other hand is a little more intense. We think that one is close to “over-ripe pineapple”. I’d rather have the yellowwood in my garden – if only I could fit it in. It’s a smallish tree – 30-50′ at maturity – but it branches low and can be nearly as wide as it is tall. (I’m thinking about knocking down the garage…)

What is heaven scent in your garden right now?

… and you never know what you might find. If I had to give a reason for why I garden it would have to be because of the new growth on plants. I’m much more fascinated by a baby leaf than almost any bloom. So, this morning to start my week off right, rather than scout for flowers – which I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of lately just to keep up – I focused on the emerging leaves instead. And because there’s poetry in nature, it was a flower that made my day.

I have never seen the dove tree (Davidia involucrata) flower in its infancy before – probably because the tree only goes on my radar when the ghostly pale flower bracts drape the tree in an un-miss-able display around the middle to late May (earlier this year if I had to guess). Now that I know that the bracts around the flowers emerge green and wrinkled with the leaves, I will pay close attention early again next year.

For those of you who are still on the lookout for daffodils, they may be going by but are still putting on a gorgeous show. And besides all of the flowers on the property there’s so much more to see – especially if you turn over some new leaves.