Wordless Wednesday pictures from an August 2012 post. . .
Northern Virginia, August 2011.
Click on any thumbnail below and enjoy.


Wordless Wednesday pictures from an August 2012 post. . .
Northern Virginia, August 2011.
Click on any thumbnail below and enjoy.
I thought you might like to see some photos of my parents’ garden in Northern Virginia — the one which surrounds last week’s “Wordless Wednesday” stepping stone. I took these pictures last August, before we left for Rwanda.
Tara Dillard often writes in her blog about beautiful landscapes shaped by the “poverty cycle.” My parents have a deer cycle.
Every summer, the deer pass through the garden, the old Christmas tree field, and the woods — eating and eating. Their numbers have increased over the garden’s 30-year existence, as farmed and forested lands have been lost to suburban development.
The result is a planting palette dominated by species that deer don’t like: boxwood, cherry laurels, beautyberry, Miscanthus grass, lamb’s ear, Liriope, Hellebores, Russian sage.
The hollies, Aucuba, Hostas, Viburnums, and Solomon’s seal — which deer do like — are protected, with some success, by lines of nylon filament and and smelly sprays. The two dogs occasionally rise to a bark and a brief pretend chase, but mostly ignore the passing herds.
My mother misses her old daylily collection, but she also loves watching each year’s crop of fawns. I think the drifts of silvery grey, lavender, lime, and dark green are peaceful and perfectly set off the gorgeous view of the mountains.
Click on any thumbnail below and enjoy.