A MENAGERIE?

Late June is pressing down on us.
The trees are one green and the garden is becoming quieter. This morning a lone song thrush calls, a young sparrow chirps. The only other sound is the raucous call of the magpies and the chunner of a pheasant outside the kitchen door.
Down the long path, where I covered the seed bed with netting and sowed carrots and parsnips, there are two fat rabbits sitting on the top of the netting. One reaches up and eats a leaf off a senecio that is in a pot (now called a Brachyglottis)(the plant not the pot). I did not know that rabbits ate those shrubs but suspect they eat just about anything. I shall go out soon and try to put better protection over the seedlings.
It is warmer and more humid. We are waiting for rain. My computer has been attacked by a virus that wiped out all my bookmarks from Safari - very strange.

It has not rained. There are goldfinches on the feeders and today (Wednesday) a greenfinch. I have not seen one of those for many months.

Wildlife is everywhere and the untamed grass is taller than I can remember - if my shoulder was not so sore I would be out scything (just an excuse).

The peonies are an explosion of pink and the small deutzia is ten feet tall - where did that come from? Each morning when I go out the philadelphus assails me with scent. The mass of vegetation is a blanket on the garden, almost smothering us. I do wish someone would smother the blackbirds though. They chatter at me in annoyance as I try to salvage redcurrants.

In the rose bed I have found an abandoned pheasant nest with twelve cold eggs. It is but a scrape in the soil and two feet from the long path - what a stupid place to build it.

No doubt the magpies and the rat will dine well so I move them to a far part of the garden in case they begin to smell.

I am sitting on the sofa in the kitchen when there is a loud thump - a young chaffinch has flown in the door and tried to escape through the window. It is on the floor, stunned. I pick it up, weighs nothing, and carefully take it outside to recover. It sits under the feeders, wobbly and shaken but finally flies away.

We have a second brood of house martins in the new nest above the kitchen door - the nest is so close I can reach up and touch it.

Thursday and I walk into the new part of the living room after breakfast. Sitting on the mat outside is a young rabbit. We stare at one another, two feet apart. It cannot smell or hear me through the double glazing. Perhaps it needs glasses?

When I open the door it ambles off - presumably to eat more of the garden. J's sunflowers are but short green stumps and netting is everywhere. It is a good job some of the veg beds are surrounded by a chicken wire fence. I do not know what else we can do other than buy a gun but that is not on my agenda. Pain in the proverbial as the bunnies may be there must be something a little Buddhist in my make up, mind you I did get in the mole catcher so . . ?

The lady's mantle, alchemilla mollis, has finally got going - late but luscious. And, yes, the foxgloves do self seed. If they were not a wild flower we would all be singing their praise as a garden plant.


And the eggs - after an exploration by sparrows and a blackbird the magpies arrived en masse, then, when most of them had gone the rat came.