Yes, I know about the charming habits of deer. There's a doe that the women around our camp made into a mascot. Nobody in their right mind would hunt this doe, and she favours our place.
A standard joke around here goes: 'What! You went to all that trouble to put up that 8' fence. The guy who sold you the fence has got 8' deer, but don't you know you've got 10' deer? Anyway, it's easier on the mind to know that deer are nice to look at and are probably too much trouble to deal with. If we plant enough, there'll probably be some for us too.
Around here, deer and apple trees are a mixed blessing. If it's too easy to grow apples, then you've got bear. Bears and apple trees go together--maybe even more so than bears and picnic tables. The deer are nicer to look at, and you don't have to put your garbage in a bunker.
The wild apples might be interesting to investigate, because they might be from original homesteads. Some years ago, there was a guy in California who collected apple trees. He had about 120 varieties dwarfed and growing in his backyard. Hikers in the Sierras started calling him up to tell him about apples trees they'd seen. The guy made the news when somebody finally donated orchard land to him to keep his collection going. He probably had some of the last survivors of what used to be hundreds of varieties before commercialization of the crop.
A picture of some of that rockwork would be nice. We've got the rock and the pic might inspire me. Well, I guess that seeing the pic would be safe enough, because inspiration for such things in January is cheap.
