Tuesday 17 June 2014

In The Garden - Havoc Wrought

...Not least on me... I seem to have developed some kinda late-onset hay-fever. My nose runs like a tap and glows like a beacon. My eyes are small, shrunken and peppery. I sneeze and sigh and feel very sorry for myself. Ah well.

But we do eat potatoes from the garden. In fact, I do dig up all the first earlies on account there is no doubt but we have been blighted. First time that it's got to the lovely tatties themselves. Had to wash and sort them, dry the survivors lovingly and put them in a box in the cool garage. Meanwhile The Old Man do cut the foliage from the second earlies what be showing dire signs of same. Hoping to have caught it before it trickles down to the tatties beneath.

This morning I do go to check my poor broad beans what have suffered weevil depredation and snails (snails don't usually bother them but I guess they saw an opportunity...) To my outrage I find the finally healthy tips are weighed down by fat dark greenfly with black legs... each the size of a tank. I have no option but to pick out these healthy tips with their sitting tenants... revealing as I do, the scurrying black ants what be placing the fat, reproducing beasts on my lovely bean plants. Blimey! The veg garden is challenging this year. But... am eating the strawberries... Yum! And eyeing up the peas for a first pick this evening. If something doesn't get there first.

In fact the whole cycle of life is a bit challenging this spring. Birds are fledging and quivering in fat, feathery bundles deposited in shrubs and trees whilst the parents hunt high and low to satisfy their hunger. The other day I skip like a ninny to film a caterpillar spinning its chrysalis on a sedge stem by the side of the drive. Truly, I be borbling on about the miracles of nature and so on. Next day I do find the chrysalis.... gone. Along with several of its brood-mates. I realise now it be likely that the desperate bird parents have taken them off to eaten by their children. One miracle of nature have been devoured by another.

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