The sun lay on the grass and warmed it. And across the expanse of green the midlife gardener looked and saw the soft volcanic shaped mounds of light brown earth stretching before him. The moles had been working hard over the past week, striving to excavate their tunnels under the lawn and pushing the soil from the darkness to the harsh sunlight above.
The man walked wearily over the once lush lawn as he looked for the old rusted shovel and the wheel barrow into which he would clear the mole hills. Ants worked the soil too, on the edge of the borders, where more mole casts converged with the flower beds and grass and the once crisply cut border edge was now covered in the extruded soil, spilling like an over-filled tub. And the man sighed as he saw the damage done to his flowers which were wilting with the lack of soil around their roots and the dust swirled in eddies between the yellowed stalks.
The cold spring had been preceded by a mild winter and the mammals of the garden had – like the slugs and snails – survived the dark nights and short days in greater numbers than previously and they were now reeking damage on so much of what had previously been well-managed vegetable plots. The mice had laid waste to the peas and beans and broccoli seedlings that the midlifegardener had sown weeks before. And as the cold spring had given way to the long early summer days that bore intimations of drought and global warming in the time to come, the man had taken action to combat the ravages of the mice. For four days straight his traps had been successful and this morning as he walked though the kohl rabi patch towards the newly planted cabbages and broccoli and brussels he pondered what he might find.
It was with mixed emotions he looked down to see another mouse caught, dead, in the jaws of the plastic trap. He rigged some protection for the young plants, fashioned from the timber window frames from the old house, with ancient sheets of glass – unequal in thickness due to the slow flow over time. He wanted to avoid the need to trap more rodents. It had worked in previous years – but would it work in this changing, unpredictable world? Only time would tell.
He picked up the shovel and went back to the lawn.
The garden is coming on a-pace at this time of year and the new seedlings have managed to hang in there despite some rough weather. At the beginning of May we had high winds to contend with and more recently another area of low pressure has tested the resolve of the pea plants and the young cabbages and brussels. What the latest anticyclone did bring was some welcome rain as the ground was beginning to look a little parched in the intervening dry spell. That’s not to say that it has been warm – far from it – with this having been a very cold May.
Runners and French ready to climb
And there have only been minor incursions from critters intent on ruining the planting. In the flower beds which we have planted with perennials and annuals, we have put chicken wire to stop the rabbits eating the cosmos, and this also discourages Ella with her size 15 paws from trampling them too. She seems to understand that jumping over chicken wire is a bad thing after being shouted at a few times when taking an “as the crow flies” route across the veg patch.
The evidence of badger foraging
The only major incident of pest control has involved the rose that we transplanted from a tub to the hotch potch border. When putting the rose in its new home I thought I would give it the best chance of survival by using some blood and bone fertilizer around the roots. Unfortunately I had forgotten b n b is attractive to omnivores such as dogs, who tend to take it from the pots of roses. This pilfering of plant food was taken to a new level by another intruder – I assume a badger – which dug a monumental hole under the newly transplanted rose. It looked like some sort of Great Escape tunnel, it was that well constructed, though the earth had been less well concealed, being sent across the grass rather than subtly kicked into the dirt of the exercise yard.
Elsewhere we are looking to contain an outbreak of leaf spot on the roses, and the first black fly are beginning to appear on the broad beans and – I am disappointed to see – on the Sea Holly. This comes at a time when the Sea Holly (Eryngium) is finally beginning to look like the illustrations suggested, as up till now the leaves have been more oval and broad than I was hoping. But they have finally settled into their new environment and sent up a central spike which is actually showing spiky leaves. I thought I had been sold a dud, but now it looks as if a separate plant has been grafted on the base. It’s all such a voyage of discovery. You never know what’s round the corner with this lot.
Outside we have not – so far – had any mice eating the young plants so have not had to put up too many barricades as yet but in the greenhouse the row of Pak Choi shows signs of rodent attack, while down the borders (well I know) the lupins will just fail to show. The heads have been eaten. I am not suspecting mice – perhaps some little weevil I guess.
But the predators do not have it all their own way as I did find a dead mole on the grass – apparently giving itself up to the authorities, hands in air. Ella has an occasional go at digging them up, so maybe I just leave it to her to police the beds.
August flew by in a whirl of picking, podding and freezing as the beans, tomatoes, peppers and others all grew to maturity and beyond. But behind the fecund abundance, the menace of death and destruction lurked in the garden.
I have commented on the battle with interlopers such as moles and caterpillars, and our combined efforts to reduce the numbers of said assailants. But more desirable garden visitors have not always managed to avoid the dangers of the garden environment.
For example, one morning as I was heading out I saw a squab (young pigeon) walking up the yard – lost, and flightless, it seemed to have fallen from a nest somewhere. I did not have time to do anything with it, leaving it to its own – or its parents’ – devices. But later in the day Fudge and Ella (our newest recruit to the Garden Home Guard), were discovered with said squab in mouth. Claire managed to “rescue” the flightless victim, but only in time to give it the last rites. The bird was still breathing, though, and as the Old Man pulled up after his morning shoppping and gossip trip, she asked if he would complete the job for her.
Mind the doors…
Well, by the time he had decided on how to get out the of car, what to do with his shopping, managed to select which pocket to put his car keys in, walked five paces towards the bird, formed a plan on exactly HOW he might despatch it (wring its neck? Swing it against a brick wall? or perhaps take an air rifle shot at it?), the bird had decided “sod it” and quietly slipped off this mortal coil out of sheer boredom. Death by exasperation was the coroner’s verdict.
We have had a plethora of woodpeckers in the garden this summer – Green and Great Spotted varieties. I could hardly turn a corner without having some noisy fledgling flying up from the grass, yaffling at me for disturbing it. Great Spotteds spend more time in the trees (and the bird feeders) but can get confused by greenhouses, as one found out to its cost. I guess it just flew into the glass and broke its neck. A shame. “Beautiful plumage”, to quote Monty Python.
The two feathered salute
The garden is not only a dangerous place for wildlife. It is for domestic life too. The hens have a new potential predator in the form of our new, supposedly soft-mouthed, retrieving hound, Ella. She managed to get into the chicken enclosure the other day and had a magically entertaining minute running after the squawking hens before I managed to pull her away from Foghorn Leghorn (our best layer). The hen remained lifeless as I took Ella inside, and still did not move when I returned. She did eventually get back on her feet, and remains fine, though her tail feathers now form a rather tell-tale V shape – as if to give a two fingered salute to any passing labrador puppies.
Caterpillar – and the remains of the meal
In terms of deliberate, more calculated exterminations, we have continued with the annual cull of cabbage white caterpillars, which have had a field day (or rather a full summer campaign) on our caulis, cabbages and brussels, not to mention the curly kale. An enthusiastic expert on TV last night was commenting on what a brilliant year it has been for butterflies. He was excited about the Orange Tips and Red Admirals, but I think their numbers are dwarfed by the sheer density of Cabbage Whites in my veg patch. It is a grim and stinky job picking caterpillars and squeezing them like runny toothpaste. But oddly satisfying.
Death to the tyrant moles!
And what of the moles? A chance conversation with a member of the underground arms trade gave me access to a weapon of mole destruction and the means to – literally – blow them up. I thought he was joking at first, but when he explained that this piece of kit, entitled “Le Detaupeur”, (“satisfait ou rembourse”) was imported from France I thought it probably did what he said. And sure enough it does. I set it up with a bucket over the top and some chicken wire around it to prevent the dogs getting too close and after a couple of nights (and a re-set in case I had not got it right) came out one morning to find both bucket and detaupeur blown out of the ground. (The voice of Michael Caine echoed in my head here – “it’s only s’posed to blow the bloody doors off”).
The mole was – I assumed – dead, but I was not prepared to excavate the area to find out. But I need not have worried: five days later, our adorable puppy decided she would do some digging and I only latterly realised where it was that she was working the soil. She successfully uncovered the decapitated mole – which I disposed off beyond her reach. So moles need to look out – we have now tapped into the murky world of the international arms trade.
And no UN mandate or weapons inspector is going to help them.
The Day Ella arrrived – Claire’s birthday
“Who me? What mole?” (note mole fluff on chin)
Happy dogs love cars
First dog show – 2nd placed in “cutest puppy” (we wuz robbed)
The large elder lies in a tangle of branches, wilting leaves and splintered trunk, alongside the dishevelled box hedge. The young tree had apparently been growing though the hedge, which had lost much of its shape as a result. There have been suggestions that the elder had been using the box as a hedge “shield” and elsewhere in the garden the sight of another elder growing out of the top of the box – but now dying – would suggest that the rumours have some foundation.
Which is more than can be said for the hedge-bound elder: sawn off close to the ground, its life curtailed. The result of hack saw and secateurs is clear. And what is equally clear is that this is no time to be an elder in the garden. Since the break down of the ceasefire between the gardening authorities and the weeds and vermin in the garden (broken – apparently – by the elderflowers’ unrelenting growth and invasion of further flower beds) clashes have become more commonplace with increasing casualties.
Sawn off at ground level – but they will be back
Most of the casualties have been sustained by weeds and elders whose infiltration of flower and vegetable settlement areas have been on the increase in the recent weeks and – according to the authorities – wholly against the planting agreements. The Midlifegardener is upscaling his combat operations with not only the heavy artillery, but also chemical warfare against many of the small weeds in and around the sundial and lavender, as well as around the edges of veg patches.
Similar tactics are being employed against aphids which have tried to settle on parsnip plants and there are rumours of massacres on the broad beans as black fly have come under sustained chemical attack.
Fudge – the rabbit chaser. “I am not a killer” she says.
Larger vermin have been targeted too. Well, I say targeted, but the aim of the “peacekeepers” is somewhat random, as the initial attempt to seek and destroy rabbits entailed the use of a “Somerset Hunting Dog” (code-named Fudge) whose high levels of enthusiasm for the job correlated inversely with her effectiveness. While few rabbits were caught there was a large amount of collateral damage as shrubs and flowers were trampled by the excitable mut. Since then the Old Guard has been brought in, with sniper fire from the French Windows accounting for a number of large and small rabbits.
All this would presume that The Garden is a place of high security and little freedom for the local inhabitants, but that would be to ignore the underground invasion that is taking place right under our feet as moles infiltrate every part of lawn and bed. The tunnellings are obvious and have so far proven to be immune to mowing and the deranged stamping of gardeners’ wellies. Top level meetings have taken place between Gardener, Old Man and Jim, but no effective means of quashing the mole rebellion has been found.
The use of ferret faeces will dissuade moles apparently, but this will only move them to another part of the garden. And mole traps, according to Jim, have limited success. So, while battle rages around the garden, the moles look to turn the lawn into their own version of Tahrir Square. As the oppressors might say, in an attempt at reverse psychology, “let the moles rise up”.
The sun lay on the grass and warmed it. And across the expanse of green the midlife gardener looked and saw the soft volcanic shaped mounds of light brown earth stretching before him. The moles had been working hard over the past week, striving to excavate their tunnels under the lawn and pushing the soil from the darkness to the harsh sunlight above.
