Of Bucks and Radishes

This rather poor excuse for a photo is for AnvilCloud who suggested I take a picture of deer in the remains of my radish patch rather than shoo them away immediately. As the saying goes, the best camera is the one you have on you when needed and so while eating dinner in the low light of dusk, my phone camera in my pocket fit the bill. While it can take beautiful pictures, at dusk and of a moving target is not an area where it excels. 

Until the radish patch planting, the deer mostly stayed down at the base of the hill up next to the trees as this sizable buck is doing. At this time of year, they mostly stay within the trees, but I think they have gotten careless during their dining sessions in my radish patch. The neighbor across the road, barely visible through the gaps in the trees above the buck's hindquarters shoots deer but he died earlier this year. However, the neighbor who lives just a couple hundred yards in the direction this buck is hunting, also shoots deer and is still very much alive. In fact, some of the early bow seasons are already open. 

If my neighbor does happen to shoot this one, I'll have to ask if they noticed a radish flavor to the meat this year.

I haven't pulled a radish in a couple weeks because I've been so disgusted at the damage the deer pulled off. As I write this, a hard freeze is forecasted in a few days and as you read it, the hard freeze has already occurred signaling the end of the growth of what remains of the radishes. I might go pull one just to see how big they never got. 

It does free up some options though. Since there isn't much of a radish crop, I may mulch up a lot of leaves and work them into the soil yet this fall just to anchor them in place. Otherwise, they would probably end up in the trees where they don't do me a lot of good. Hopefully that will add enough organics to create a bountiful crop in the garden next year when I get the fence installed to prevent deer damage.