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

FloraBuds, Just so you know, when I went back to the pharmacy to get my "medicine" for my Body and Soul, the exacums were in bad shape from over watering. Many of them had keeled over from damp rot. And the Party Times were $6!, not five. Still, I am glad I went for them. Does anyone know about their cultivation and growth haibits? The exacum looks like a ground cover to me. Thanks to all for the id's. Veronica

Just guessing from watching young seedlings, but I think the first one will go green. Hard to tell from the pictures, but it looks like the first leaves on the plant have the most varigation and it is getting less and less. Maybe a bad TC? The second does not have much green for vigor, but looks like it would be fun to watch. The third? Could be! Hey, if you have the money and space, get them all and show us how they develop!

We moved from the area we grew up in awhile back. Its so sad when we go back home. As we start into our town, there are four car dealerships, that have been open for the past 40 years closed. The industrial park is just about empty, we know so many folks that are in their forties and fifties that have lost their jobs. At first the ones that lost their jobs were blue collar, and now lots of white collar jobs are being lost. Its so sad watching families relying on unemployment. We have a judge in this town that only handles the bankruptcy of homes, and said he is busy 10 hours a day, and he is seeing folks lose low cost home and the million dollar homes. We have started helping a family that is unemployed. No one wants hand outs, They are making needed repairs to our home that is still there to give them income. They would not just accept cash, so this helps both of us. Hope folks will start looking out for their "brother in need". As I look around at all the closed business, it runs through my mind, where are the people that were once working. On our last trip, we noticed that three family furniture stores that had been around for many years had closed. Know that many long and hard hours had gone into each of these businesses and it hurts to have to close those doors. I have compassion for each of you that have lost your jobs and the ones that know that it will be a matter of time. Between my husband and myself we worked over 82 years combined, and so thankful there was a job to get up and go to for all those years. Sad thing, where my husband worked is closed now and in China, and the firm I worked for has cut back to a 3 people from 100 a few years ago. Very sad situation for people that want to work.