I'm just catching on to this thread -- guess I been too busy gardening. Nice reading and some interesting adventures.
We've given up on veggies, 1/2 mile outside the D.C. Beltway in Kensington, MD, and the deer raccoons, rabbits, possum don't give us a chance, not to mention the squirrels. Our resident fox can't keep up and control all those critters. And our yard is too big and too uneven and wooded to fence without a big bucks effort.
But it was a strange spring. We have a bunch of azaleas and rhodies and they finished a month early -- we've usually got some blooming from early March to July fourth, and then some of the native deciduous ones in August -- but not this year.
Now we're mostly trying to keep the deer from eating all our daylilies. A tip for Liquid Fence users -- add a bit of sticker spreader solution to the mix and it lasts longer.
And BTW, the lavender strap petal azalea is called Koromo Shikibu, with a short "bu" at the end, rather than the long "boo".

T.J.