Product Review. Sort Of

Welcome to Over My Garden Gate, where the elk are prolific and the flowers are gone. Do I sound bitter? Because I feel bitter. But apparently my flowers are delicious, even if they do smell like garlic and rotten eggs.

There are many products on the market that are sold to help gardeners and landscapers deal with pests: stinky sprays and stinky pellet sprinkles, motion detector sprinklers, alarms and all manner of clever gadgets. I have yet to find an effective product or method, even if I deploy all the tips and tools at once.

I spray the plants with stinky spray, use sprinklers to keep the Horrible Beasties at bay, allow the neighborhood dogs to leave their calling cards/scent all over my yard, hang human hair in strategic locations to function as a pseudo scarecrow of sorts---you name it, I’ve tried it. Including kill permits and chasing elk from my flowerbeds with a small sledge-hammer, while wearing only a bath towel. For clarity—I was in the bath towel, the elk were not. At least that’s how the “chase” started. That story ends with a downturn in the local real estate market and no discernable drop in the number of elk visits to my petunias.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve employed duct tape as a fence building material, I’ve draped articles of clothing over the branches of newly planted trees to frighten elk away---articles of clothing that I had, up until that point, been wearing—because I was convinced that while I turned my back to go find my stinky spray the elk would rush in, eat my tree and I’d come back to a stump.

Fence fixings...

Fun Fact: the night of the elk assault on my flowers, I had had a meeting THAT VERY DAY with Officer Conklin of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. She had offered relief in the form of a loaner electric fence, heavily festooned with long, flappy, elk-frightening ribbons. This fence looks not unlike an old-fashioned clothesline with a bunch of long, red socks hanging from it---if you imagine the clothesline coming with a little kilowatt kicker. ZAAAAP--- I know I imagined it. Often.

Apparently, elk are the Evil Genius Spawn of Satan...