LD 434 Fort Laramie (well, not quite)

I christened this "Fort Laramie" when I first saw it, and although it isn't anything like the wonderful reconstruction of the actual Fort Laramie undertaken by my friends in Cyark ( a vital tour of which is available on line) the idea of protection is very much common to both.

In our case it is protection from deer and it is a sad truth that in Cowal it isn't possible to plant trees without some form of deer protection, a fact I have blipped , tweeted and written about a lot over the past decade including in this piece I contributed for a series commissioned by the Scottish Wild Life Trust back in 2016.   

Cathleen commissioned the orchard  from John Hancox more than two years ago and he provided a good range of Scottish fruit trees suitable for the location.   However eventually we had to put in the deer fencing and gate  last year (there had been some less robust fencing originally)  because we lost almost the entire first year flowers, and what little crop eventually survived , as a result of deer predation.

Today she gave the areas inside its first cut since the fence went up, which takes a bit of toning and fro-ing with the lawn tractor, but if we get - in time - the fruit that it was planted to provide we will be happy.   

Even if the deer are not.