Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara

Thanks, to all of you who have taken the time to answer my post, I really appreciate it. To answer a few of your questions, I had my husband build a coldframe, but it is up on a large table instead of on the ground. Therefore, heating cables running through soil isn't going to work unless I move it to the ground. The table is a thick work table and the coldframe sits on it perfectly, so cold air shouldn't be able to get under the coldframe. I put it up on a table since it is easier for me to tend to my plants. Maybe I will try to put it on the ground and try the heating cable thing, but I have animals and when the lid is open they like to eat my plants. I am either losing plants to cold snaps or animals and I am quite tired of it. Since it is always recommended that you wait until the night time temperatures are in the 60's to transplant outside, I figured that it needed to be at least 60 degrees inside the coldframe or greenhouse at night to keep them from freezing and dying. So I wanted to keep them as toasty as possible. So now my question would be how cold is too cold for the little seedlings or plants? To answer one of the other questions that was asked, I'm not really sure what I would consider the contraption that my husband built for me. Looks like and is built like a coldframe, but could be more like a minature greenhouse, but regardless it isn't working for me the way I visioned that it would.....Lisa

Yes, looks like either Ipomoea hederacea or Ipomoea nil...both of these are most commonly a blue color There is even 1 leaf in the lower left of the 2nd photo that looks like (perhaps) either Ipomoea coccinea or Ipomoea hederifolia and these 2 species may have smaller blooms that are a reddish ,orange or yellow color... Please post a closeup of any flowerbuds when they develop and I can narrow the ID for you... Hope that helps... TTY,... Ron P.S. - Did you plant any MG's (?) or are the plants volunteers (?)

Pamala...that was deep :oP And in my case quite correct :) I actully feel a connection with the things I add to my home. A lovely little cordial glass can give me as much or more pleasure as an antique piece of jewelry. I love that the things were held in someone's hand a hundred years ago :) and now I get to enjoy them. I've always been this way, from a canning jar to a yellow ware bowl, I just love the joy of old stuff :oP And now I have an excuse to need more...so the hunt continues. And I will say, it's the hunt and kill aspect that makes it so much more fun than if I just walked into a store and said "I'll take that and that and that" to fill spaces verses searching for the perfect silly little thing...which normally I don't find, it finds me :o) I will say, I also have really gotten into the hunt to give away as well! I just gave habitat for humanity enough stuff from this house to fill three truck loads. I love losing the clutter and love that losing it meant it went to help someone else have a home some day or fill a home someday (our habitat store is a nice thrift store and it's a wonderful place to shop). I did the same thing in alaska when we moved into our finished house. It was great to donate a huge heap of very usable stuff that no longer apealed to me or I didn't have a need for anymore. Maybe I have house focused bulemia? Binge and purge syndrome...only instead of food I binge on silly things like antique canning jars LOL