You get what you pay for...

The oak leaf hydrangea ($20, Medium Expensive Nursery) didn't make it all all, nor some other white snowball type (also $20, MEN).

A puffball blue one (Home Depot, $8) was also decimated, but it's now bravely attempting a comeback:

  

The variegated euonymous (WalMart, $6) was chewed right down to the roots, but it's come back just fine:

And then of course there's the legendary Ilex Party Boy (WalMart, $6), enthusiasticallly fertilizing the two Dragon Ladies twenty times his size who live way across the yard:

I have decided to count the blueberries (Stop & Shop, $14) as a qualified success.  Yes, the deer ate all the berries last year; and yes, they ate all but about 20 this year.  However, the bushes themselves are hanging in there; and I've decided to plant more next year, along with more salvia and maybe some Russian sage as well to hang over them fragrantly and dissuade the deer; and cover the whole line with nets during picking season.  Because they're awfully pretty Shrubs and it is awfully fun to pick berries, even if I don't, strictly speaking, believe in fussing with nets.

And you just can't kill pieris, even if you're a deer.  (Tomorrow's post will focus exclusively on my Little Pieris of Horrors, to get Dr. K's advice on pruning...)

 

It looks like 5 pictures a post is about what blogspot will allow me; so I'll do a third with the Unqualified Successes....