It used to be a staple of Connecticut and New York county lanes: great big naturalized clumps of orange day lillies. In the 1980s they started disappearing. The culprit: deer, but really humans. Massive development eliminated deer habitat and their panicked reaction was to increase procreation, thus creating larger and larger stock of hungrier and hungrier deer. Their solution: start foraging ornamental flowers.
Before long, threadbare straggler were all that was left of once-abundant day lilly beds. This summer, however, it looks like there’s been a return to plenitude, at least relatively speaking.
Are home owners diligently sowing new crops and going out in force to their roadsides, deer repellent in hand? And returning after every rain?
It’s doubtful, but possible, that the deer have lost their taste for the lillies, but as I said doubtful. They are voracious and now will eat ornamental blooms regardless of how much greenery is available.
I remember when spotting deer was a rare and exciting occurrence!