Return of the Mystery Pruner?

We've had a volunteer rose bush that grows in the planter beside the garage.  Cindy periodically cuts it back and tries to dig out the roots, but it persists and eventually reappears, as it did this year.  It wasn't high on the gardening priority list, but this morning I noticed that most of the canes had been raggedly chopped back, most of them about 5 or 6 inches off the ground.  

Just A Couple of Sticks

And One Long One

One cane was still about a foot long, and one small one had been left completely alone.  None of the other plants showed any sign of damage at all.  I thought it might have been a skunk because I had noticed a kind of skunky smell in the area, but Cindy pointed out that the plant about two feet away is called Skunk Plant for a very good reason--that's what it smells like.  When the leaves are disturbed, it smells very much like a skunk has passed by recently.  

So what kind of critter eats rose canes?  And apparently nothing else.  The last time we had a critter "prune" some of our citrus plants, we eventually concluded it must have been a deer.  See http://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-garden-mystery.html  Even though we live in a city of 1.3 million people, surrounded by freeways, deer do sometimes come down the San Diego River, sometime with startling results.   https://plantagarden-itllgrowonyou.blogspot.com/2013/01/yes-deer.html

I'm finding it hard to believe that deer would be such selective eaters that they would prefer a few rose canes to whole garden beds full of tomatoes, green beans, eggplant and other veggie delights.  And although Cindy's anti-varmint panels have been very good protection against the ravages of the California Ground Squirrel population, I don't think they would stand up to a determined deer.

It's still a mystery.  

Look Out For Bears!

We woke up yesterday morning and found that some critter had knocked our birdbath completely over, denting the edge of the basin and knocking the water wiggler across the path.  Since it's a fairly substantial birdbath, it had to be a fairly substantial critter that did it.

That started us wondering what animal could have done this.  I don't think that even the big papa skunk we've seen around is big enough to do it.  A large raccoon could probably tip it over, or possibly the neighbors' cat could have jumped up on it, but there seemed like a lot of destruction for that.

Then we found a strange track in the decomposed granite pathway.

The track was about four inches wide by about four inches long and appeared to have at least four separate toes and possible a fifth toe, too.  We couldn't see any claw marks in the DG, but it's probably too coarse a texture for that, anyway.  

That started me off on an internet search of tracks of various animals that could have done it:  dog, coyote, cougar and bear.  The bear tracks at the San Diego Natural History Museum look the closest to what we saw, considering the size of the track and the number and width of the toes.

It's really hard to believe it could be a bear, considering that we live in a city of 1.3 million people, surrounded by freeways, but that was our reaction to the suggestion that deer had chomped our citrus trees, until a deer crashed through the IHOP window a few miles away.  

However, my brother, who is familiar with the tracks of many different types of critters, says he thinks it was most likely a large dog; a bear would probably have also trashed our bird feeder, especially the suet feeder, and there would probably have been a lot more digging in the raised beds. 

O.K., so maybe it's a dog, but we're going to be pretty cautious about going outside at night from now on.   

Yes, Deer

We were very puzzled when our two small citrus trees out behind the fence were radically "pruned" early last year.  The cuts on the stems were very sharp, not shredded or chewed.  We speculated that it might be the usual suspects, AKA the California Ground Squirrels or a giant rabbit, or even a neighbor trying out new pruning shears.   (See New Garden Mystery, January 2012)).

But everybody else said some variation of "it's a deer."  We initially had trouble accepting that explanation; we live in the middle of a city of 1.3 million people, after all.  Our neighborhood is surrounded by freeways and we had never seen any evidence of deer in the area.

Then, on Labor Day morning, a (you guessed it) DEER crashed through the plate glass window of the International House of Pancakes in Mission Valley, about four miles down the valley from us.  The IHOP manager finally opened the emergency exit and the deer bolted off into the blue.  They speculated that the deer had come down the nearby San Diego River bed and across the parking lot to crash into the restaurant. Check out the video at: http://www.10news.com/news/video-shows-deer-running-through-mission-valley-ihop-2 .

So we finally had to accept the idea that it really was a deer that had followed the river down and chomped our trees on his way to the restaurant.

Probably looking for a little citrus to go with his pancakes, I guess.

The Extravagant Perfume of Orange Blossoms

After The Deer Pruned It

The citrus tree that was so severely pruned by the deer last January (See New Garden Mystery) has bounced back nicely and is now loaded with leaves and white blossoms.

And those blossoms are giving off the unmistakable scent of orange blossoms.  This was one of the bushes we thought had been mislabled by the nursery, but it's now clear that this really is an orange.

I love the scent of orange blossoms; I'm almost overwhelmed by the wonderful scent every time I walk past this plant.  It always reminds me of the first time Cindy and I went to Temecula.  It was March and she drove down from Riverside and I came up from San Diego to meet at the Mount Palomar winery to consult on a project we were both working on.

I drove home through the numerous orange groves with my windows down so I could smell the orange blossoms all the way.

Today

So now we have our own orange blossoms, and they  remind me of that meeting every time I smell them.

Wonderful.

The Official Word

Clipped Citrus

The new class of Master Gardeners had a presentation today from an expert on vertebrate pests, who told them that damage like that to our two Citrus trees is most likely done by deer, rather than by rabbits or squirrels.  

Damage higher than two feet:  check.

Twigs clipped instead of chewed or gnawed:  check.

Not much left on the tree:  check.

Conclusion:  deer.  

Other than the damage to the two small trees, we still haven't seen any signs of deer in the area.  You would think somebody would see them from time to time.   

The good news is that the tree now looks better than it did before the damage was done.  The second tree is also recovering, but it's a little slower.  

Recovering Citrus

We're just hoping the deer don't have a taste for the leaves on the new Avocado tree we just planted out behind the fence.