On The Road

On The Road (from the series: Stigma & Style)

The flowers in this image live “on the road” and, for a brief couple of weeks in the spring, they are shaded by a canopy of blossom. On the outskirts of Austin, flowers like these are relatively rare. The deer eat them. Texas deer are similar to goats - they’ll eat just about anything. And they are particularly partial to flowers of any kind.

There’s a web site which lists the flowers deer will and will not eat, but a neighbor of mine warned me not to trust such information. “The Austin deer”, she proclaimed, “don’t visit that web site.” When you buy bedding plants for the garden, she advises, you should leave them out in your driveway for a day or two. The deer will come along, eat what they like, and you can plant the rest.

So the plants in this image are prime deer food, but they survive by virtue of their location. It has sufficient traffic to deter the Texas flower predators.