Tag Archives: caterpillars

Garden Surgery

Lavender and Bean
Lavender and Bean

More rain for the garden at the end of August meant the flowers were looking battered and the veg bedraggled too.  So we did some more structural maintenance on the trees and larger shrubs in between the downpours.

The boomerang bed came in for some trimming, as – quite randomly it seems – a whole branch of the Indian Bean Tree (Catalpa) simply died for no apparent reason.  One day it was healthy, with flowers just blooming – the next day it just withered.  Amputation of the dead limb was the clear solution.  While I was at it I gave the shrubs underneath it a hair cut too as they were beginning to overcome the Catalpa – although I don’t think the branch died through overcrowding from some jumped up shrubs.

Elsewhere I tidied up other stuff in the drive and I even managed to get JB Jr to hack and prune the Cotoneaster at the front so we still have a room with a view.  He loathes the task, but I reckon his youth and height qualify him far better to do the job than his slipped-disc-cartilage-deficient father.

Down the veg patch the battle still rages with the caterpillars.  An acquaintance the other day proudly announced that she did not believe in killing the Brassica browsing thugs, and said that her plants would survive intact with happy butterfly larvae.  We do not hold with such do goody good liberal-minded hippy shit.  Mrs B takes it as personal affront that anyone other ourselves is eating our plants so the other day we donned the gloves of doom and squished caterpillars till we had both broken the three dart maximum of ONE HUNDRED AND EIIIIIGHTEEE!  We thought our cabbages, purple sprouting and brussels would be much better off without nearly four hundred predators munching their leaves.  The only misjudgment we think we made was Mrs B wearing a white shirt to squish green caterpillars.

(I can see this being the next washing powder commercial….Anguished housewife to camera: “but how can I get squashed caterpillar stains out of my husband’s white t-shirt?”).

 

 

 

Dead Air

Retaking territory after the weeds
Re-taking territory after the weeds

It rained yesterday.  Bucketloads.  Which was a good thing.  Not in the “It’ll do the garden good” kind of way, because the garden is plenty wet enough thanks.  No – it gave us the excuse to stay indoors and watch the battle of Good v Evil which was how the World Athletics Championships had been billed.  Having had the brilliance and farce / tragedy of the women’s Heptathlon as Ennis-Hill ruled supreme and Johnson-Thompson fouled out (tragically? stupidly?) we had the Bolt v Gatlin race for the soul of athletics.  The whole eternal battle thing was a little over the top, but it was pleasing to see the Good Guy beat the one wearing the metaphorical black stetson.  Usain rode off with gold on his golden Palomino.

Raspeberries are secure
Raspeberries are secure

After that breathless excitement it was time turn to our own Midday in the garden of Good and Evil.  There is plenty of decent stuff in the garden – such as my nice new fruit cage that I have manufactured out of the twisted remains of the gazebo that took a battering in the June gale, and the flowers that we planted are still blooming:  Cosmos are brilliant, Rudbeckia tall and proud, Gladiolae still glad to be gay and Veronica small but perfectly formed.

There are plenty of veg, if one looks hard enough:  courgettes ranging from petite to XXXXL, green beans, runner beans and dwarf french (although the climbing french for some reason have simply whithered on the cane).  Plenty of potatoes, summer psb, and spicy, peppery salad leaves.

Eggs have hatched
Eggs have hatched

But there is still a constant battle of Good and Evil here too.  The cabbage whites have managed to lay their eggs and we now wage war with the caterpillars which have stripped some plants clean.  The leeks which we planted before we went away, were razed to the ground within 24 hours so we raised the barricades for them and they seem to have recovered.  The lawn (well, grassy area) has more patches than a quilters’ convention with splodges of bare earth dotted all over showing a  constant reminder of mole activity.  And the roses have once again been given the sign of the black spot with death and decay to follow.  Not even the greenhouse is immune where the ants nests are abundant despite the ants always seeming to take to the air (I thought they all flew on one day and that was it?).  I am not sure how much damage they actually cause, but surely they cannot be helping?

But despite the dead air of the greenhouse there is still some promising news with the first two tomates finally making it to the table – about three months after the gardening giants of Galhampton had started cropping their wonder plants.   Ours will taste all the better for the wait – or at least that is how I try to argue it with Mrs B.