Beautiful rose Gattina. So nice to have you back. I'm not a great rose person but would like to follow.

I don't think I would cut it back now. if the weather forecast is wrong and you get frost you will loose the newer growth.

I'd leave it too. What a beautiful house!

Thank you - it's nice to be among friends again! I really don't think, going on past years, that there is much chance of frost for at least 2 months yet, SBG. Would you like to buy the house, Steragram? Getting homesick.

Gattina....you can't be thinking of moving back? Well if Stera doesn't can I be 2nd in the queue....:))

I agree with the girls, leave it for now......

Thank you for the offer Gattina, but I'm hoping to see my garden mature so don't want to leave it at the moment...
So now's your chance Janey.

It's all yours, Janey.....Seriously. No, not back, just somewhere smaller, maybe. I'm not leaving this climate just yet. It'll break my heart.
I think you're right about the rose. I think I'm going to have to put up barbed wire round it, though. I thought I could hear the deer trotting round the garden in the small hours last night. I haven't dared go out to survey the damage yet.

Ahhh...if only....:))

Try putting some hot chilli powder or the like on it, you won't need much.

It'd take a lot of chilli powder to do the whole garden, Cammomile! Actually, now that our drought has broken, we're hoping the poor creature won't be so desperate to find food and moisture, although our neighbours' gardens give the lie to this. Deer obviously LIKE the taste of roses. And courgettes, and tomatoes, and spinach, and cucumbers, and french beans, and cabbages and cauliflowers. Why eat grass when you can eat flowers and salad? We've even discovered it in the cellar, drinking from the cats' water bowls. Seriously, though, the chilli powder seems like a very sensible idea: I'll give it a go. Thank you for that! Now for the caterpillars, although the falling temperatures (we're down to 19° today and feeling distinctly chilly) will probably see those off.

I don't suppose a bright security floodlight would scare your night visitors? I have heard old bits of material soaked in creosote and hung in strategic places around the boundary can put them off but I don't know if you can still get it.

I tried using methyl salicylate, which is a similar chemical to deter badgers and giant porcupines a few years ago: I don't know whether it was coincidence or whether it truly worked, but they didn't dig up any more plants and bulbs that year. I was told that if it worked with those, it might work against deer. At the time we had no problem with those, so I gave the remainder of the bottle to some friends who had nightly visits from the rose-munchers: it didn't work. One of our roses, though, a splendid "Iceberg" is growing up a creosote-treated summer house. That rose is intact, so you could be right.

An update: Our next-door neighbour tells us that a roe deer was found dead in front of her house last week. It sounds like our visitor. Poor thing! If it was ill, maybe that's why it was out of its normal habitat.

Oh sad. I feel really mean about the chilli powder and the creosote now. Well maybe the roses will survive now.

That wasn't mean, Cammomile - most of our neighbours whose large vegetable plots and vines have been ravaged have been suggesting a shotgun posse. Your ideas were positively humane.