Friday 28 June 2019

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.


1 comment:

  1. We were trying to grow sweet potatoes this year for the first time. The rabbits have kept the foliage down along with nibbling the runners. So not sure if there are any potatoes down in the ground. We will have to dig to see. The deer love the okra and keep it cut close to the ground but truthfully one plant is all we really need & somehow they have left us one.

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