Having lost almost our entire non-citrus fruit crop and most of the vegetable garden to the ground squirrels this year, I am not as wildlife friendly as you are. The deer stay outside the fence so they cannot do much harm. I throw deadfall citrus and rose or grape prunings over the fence for them. I'm really not a fan of feeding wildlife but my heart was moved to pity. I'm seeing fewer gopher mounds these days. Someone told me that the ground squirrels are pretty fierce and drive them off. That surprises me. I thought the gophers were the fiercer of the two species. A couple of weeks ago a mountain lion went rogue and attacked a child a couple of miles from my house. The boy recovered fully, and they got the mountain lion, with DNA confirmation that it was the right one. Normally mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes leave people along. I welcome them, so long as they do. The rattlesnakes I'm not so crazy about. Our dog was bit a couple of years ago. She did recover, but was very sick and it was touch and go. With the drought, they are coming in closer chasing the rodent population. My wildlife support is limited to planting shrub and tree species that support birds and beneficial insects, and mostly planting them in the ungardened area outside the fence. It was a bare, weedy, steep hillside before I began a couple of years ago, disced yearly for fire abatement as required by law. With enough years and enough rainfall, I hope to transform it. And unfortunately I must now rely on the use of RoundUp to control the weeds until the trees are big enough to do the job for me. That was a difficult decision, but the hill cannot be disced anymore with all the small trees and shrubs. Ultimately these plants will have to get by on natural rainfall, but I am giving them a couple years of watering to get them started. We got somewhere between a quarter and a half an inch of rain the other day, cause for celebration. Rosefolly

Thank you all again for all of the ideas! It always amazes me how different plants act in different gardens, even in theoretically similar climates. Randomly, Spanish bluebells love my garden, but make large tall clumps which are too big for what I am contemplating. I have planted nerines several times before, and they disappeared quite promptly never to be seen again (except one which miraculously re-appeared 10 years later). Naked ladies, on the other hand, love it here and have naturalized in vacant lots all around here. I have original pink ones (which from the old pics have been in my garden forever), and also some larger white ones and darker pink ones that I planted - they are happy here. They are just setting seed, so I will go on line and find out how to grow them from seed - that will be fun. I have ordered leucojum, lots of the shorter warm climate narcissus, Dutch iris, some sort of allium which looks natural and theoretically grows in the shade, some sort of short lily called ixiolirion tartaricum, and with the naked ladies that will be enough for now. I will plant some of them in the sunny side some in the shady side, and some in both just to see what happens. Cyclamen does grow well here, but I think it is too short, and frankly, I do not really like it (don't know why). Muscovyduckling - I am so jealous that you just found daphne odora alba "at the local hardware shop"! I went to our local nursery, which is independent, and the oldest nursery in California ( the 4th generation of the same family owns it). They said they could not even order it for me! I could not find it on line either. One place had it, but could not ship to CA. Anyway, I got the normal one with pink flowers but varigated foliage, and it is happy in its new planter which my DH built for it, so it would be in a "raised bed" and would thus have the great drainage they need. This forum is wonderful - when I posted basically this same question on the bulb forum, I got no responses at all until the third day, and then someone responded, I think just to be polite, but with no suggestions. Jackie

Hi Dorothy, The deer are in my yard in record numbers this fall and winter and the only veggies/herbs I've ever grown that they never have eaten in our 9.5 years here are lemon balm, basil, garlic and onions. I have dusty miller in planters by the barn and they've never nibbled at them either. They also don't seem fond of ornamental cabbage although they devour the regular cabbage if they get a chance. Although they have their own favorites (in my garden it is okra and pepper plants), they'll eventually eat even the coarse pumpkin leaves if they get hungry enough. I've even had them eat the leaves of castor bean plants and both datura and brugmansia plants. It is somewhat ironic they are eating your deer tongue lettuce, isn't it? The deer here have the attitude that I shouldn't plant anything I don't want them to eat. The taller (7' tall) garden fence mostly kept them out after we errected it this year, but sometimes they go into the garden if I leave the gate open. (Ooops.) They even raid the two bird feeders occasionally and will nibble on Burford holly leaves when they are feeling desperate in late winter. About all I can say about the record numbers of deer this year is that we also seem to have huge numbers of coyotes pursuing them. (And, consequently, the rabbit population has plunged these last few months too.) I also find it ironic that friends and relatives of ours who hunt (especially in the drought-plagued Hill Country of Texas) are not having a good hunting season---I keep telling them to come sit in my driveway (tongue-in-cheek) from dusk to dawn and they'll be able to get a deer every night of the week. Is your big veggie garden fenced? Dawn

A forest will choke out a thicket, I often recomend that fruit and nut trees be planted on purpose, so that we lock up carbon and produce food for ourselves, and chocke out the brush plants that are unpleasent to walk through. When you go on a hike along a tail it seems that you are always either bordered by clearing/lawn or by a thicket, but once you break through that thicket you can useually travle quite quickly and easily and have plenty of space to move about. The main reasonfor removing trees and brush historicly wasn't to make things more pleasent, it was to open up land for agricultural use. with a field we can grow staple cerial grains, or legumes, or use it as pasture for animals, while some trees may provide seasonal food for some critters it takes alot of work to survive off of them year round (and trust me when I say thing, willow does not taste that good) . Our modenr day lawns were not contrived from thin air, you need to look at were they came from to understand how they fit in. Lawns are popular mainly in the south (sure, lots of people like them, but in the south they are sick for them) the south had a large portion of its caucasian inhabitants come from scotland (the southern drawl is very closely related to the scots accent) in schotland they have huge green field that are kept down to a few inches all summer long, this is because there is alot of rain and people raise sheep. Now, in the south there isn't as much water in the summer, and there aren't as many sheep, but people still liked the look of home so a lawn with mowers and irrigation is what they came up with.