I have wild parts of the garden - try to accommodate wildlife, but sometimes it is a struggle. The gooseberry sawfly have finally stripped the bushes. They are too prickly to start picking off the munchers by hand. I do not want to spray anything on the fruit so the gogs will have to be picked now. We repel successive invasions of cabbage and small white butterfly caterpillars on the brassicas, slugs and snails elsewhere and I have not mentioned mites on pears, aphids on currants, wasps harvesting oak from the porch and benches, and blackbirds!
They have stripped the red currants again. I carefully netted the fruit but they forced a way in. I actually caught one inside the nets where it raised a terrible racket, squawking and flapping until it escaped.
And when it had gone the jays arrived.
I do not object to them having some blackcurrants as we have plenty but !!!
We have also had another tragedy with two birds, panicked by Megatron the black cat from down in the village, dying after flying into my study window.
And I have not mentioned weeds - so I won't.
All that said the flowers are wonderful and we have a house and garden full - at the moment - especially the roses.
The last rose is Rosa rubifolia and a seedling given to me by my late Aunt Phebe from the garden at The Manor, Wormleighton.
These are but a selection of the roses, the wild briars, Albertine and others I have not shown.
Most dramatic of all are the two Rambling Rectors - one up the old ash tree and the other sprawled over the flowering currant by the disused well. The first of these was the first thing I put into the garden when we bought the plot.
Gardening at this time of year is a strange mixture of harvest - both fruit and flowers - and a battle with the urge the garden has to swamp me with growth.
And I have not mentioned the unseasonal weather.
It is hot (for us) with temperatures in the upper 20s, has been for over a week and the spectre of watering the ground looms. However we do have our own water supply.
For the first time I can see that the trees around the garden have grown. One oak left in the hedge when it was laid is rocketing skyward and becoming special.
The windows have just been cleaned and the feather powder shadows of birds that have hit them removed.
Time for a pome -
PREDATOR
There is a ghost on the glass,
a sparrow hawk silhouette
in feather dust, wings spread
in a late attempt to brake.
The tree sparrow escaped,
side-flew the predator
at the last moment, scraped
the pebble-dash in panic.
The stunned falcon staggered
away through the afternoon,
flew raggedly to a nearby ash
to recuperate and preen.
The garden was silent with fear,
waited for the grey missile to leave,
which, in the end, it did, streaked
over the barbed wire, hunting.
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