Tag Archives: rabbits

Eat, Sleep, Retrieve, Repeat

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Gathering the leaves – and possibly the walnuts

Ella is a retriever / lab cross.  There’s probably a posh name for this – like a labtrine or something.  I guess someone somewhere has already thought of crossing the shitsu with a poodle (how much for a shitapoo?) but the key feature of our dog’s genetic inheritance is an overweening desire to bring back anything that is dead.  Like rigor mortis rabbits (with which she nearly took Mrs B off at the knees the other day) or pigeons that have been half eaten by sparrowhawks. But she will also attempt to retrieve stuff which has not actually been shot or died of starvation.

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One pheasant – dead or only resting?

Autumn around these parts brings out the birds and beasts that are trying desperately to fatten up for the winter months.  The pheasant is one such bird trying to fatten up for winter though it has not idea that all it has been successively bred for is to be shot by posh boys in tweed before being collected by their soft-mouthed coated canine companions.  It might explain why they have the aerial ability an early Wright Brothers prototype, making them tempting bait for anything that will chase – thus cutting out the gun-toting middle man.  The other morning our over-keen gun dog disappeared down the lane after a pheasant.  It seems the bird’s idea to try to out-run the labrador failed as two minutes later – much to Mrs B’s dismay – the dog returned with bird in mouth (is that worth two in the bush?) and placed it Mrs B’s feet.

However, as Mrs B tried to move the corpse out of the road, the pheasant jumped up and ran into the ditch.  Miracle?  Maybe.  The chances are that the Lazarus-like recovery of the bird was just the “headless chicken” response of a bird that was pretty much dead.  But Mrs B retains the notion that the pheasant is still out there wandering the hedges and ditches.  Aaaah.

Elsewhere Ella has less success chasing the squirrels that pilfer the walnuts.  Looking from the Labrador’s eye view, how hard can it be?  Squirrels are small, slow-moving, can’t fly, and appear to be such easy targets to chase down and destroy.  And yet…..   Ella spends many a long hour gazing into the branches working out how she can climb the tree to snag the rat.  Fudge did climb the tree once – having chased a squirrel at such pace towards the walnut she actually ran up the trunk almost to the bottom branches ten feet up before, like Wile E Coyote, she noticed gravity was about to take effect.  It was long way down.

The constant chasing is symptomatic of the turf war between dogs and squirrels over who owns the walnuts.  Ella retrieves them (naturally) and it is a subtle observation game to tell when the lab has a nut in her mouth.  But Fudge has taught her how to crack them open and eat them.  So seeing the squirrels tucking into them will only annoy the territorially jealous dogs.

Elsewhere Ella employs her jumping skills indoors as aprt of the self-appointed dance police.  She won’t allow any dancing at any time and attacks any offenders.  On he whole she is a very quiet dog and the only time she barks is in her sleep.  A Fat Boy Slim gig (which we went to at Pilton Party in September) would be her worst nightmare, but I suspect what really makes her howl in her sleep are those pesky squirrel varmint.

April Unfurls

Easter Buns
My Easter Buns

It’s Easter and bunnies are very much of the moment around here as Ella once again caught her very own Easter Bunny when VB took her for a walk. In Ella’s defence (and the rabbit’s for getting caught by a lugubrious black lab in open grassland twenty hops from the safety of the burrow) there is a lot of myxomatosis around at the moment. So perhaps Ella is doing a merciful task putting rabbits beyond pain before they become too sick. A canine Dignitas for rabbits – though not so dignified for Verity who struggled to get her retriever to drop the still warm, possibly breathing, rabbit.

Who's been digging in my bed?
Who’s been digging in my bed?

Down the garden there was evidence of rabbits in the garden as one part of the chicken wire seemed to have been pushed down before a couple of random holes were dug in the onions.  No onions were harmed in the skirmish but I have since got another couple of rolls of chicken wire from Swift Huts and renewed the rabbit proof fencing around both veg patches.

The  main item on the list of jobs is PLANTING.  The greenhouse is fit to bursting with seed trays full of Broad Beans,  Cabbages, Curly Kale, Cavalo Nero, Kohl Rabi, Leeks, Mangetout, Sugar Snap Peas, Peas, Purple Sprouting, Butternut Squash, Uchiki Kuri Squash, Sweet Peppers, Chilli Peppers, Tomatoes, Coriander, Basil and Aubergines.

Old Faithful
Old Faithful

In addition to a mass of full seed trays, another sure sign of spring is the sound of the rotovator. The old Howard never fails you.  It can sit in the Cow Stall all winter, unloved and seemingly forgotten, but comes out in the spring like a Grizzly Bear from hibernation ready to take all before it.  It never fails to start and apparently needs no maintenance.  It is a marvel.  Or so I was saying as the clutch went half way through digging the salad bed….

I had a feeling it would be easy to mend, but neither myself nor Jim could see it so I was forced to ask the OM to tell me how to re-attach the wire.  I am increasingly worried by his lack of mobility and unwillingness to walk further than the garage and back, but such was the importance of the issue, he made it down the garden to stand on one side of the chicken wire and instruct me on how to mend the machine.  Fortunately it was done in a trice and hopefully the exercise did him good

In the main veg patch I have gone all “No Dig” this year, with the cardboard  keeping the weeds down, so I was able to plant the spuds with relative ease.  I have a combination of Belle de Fontenay, International Kidney, Cherie, Pink Fir Apple, Sarpo Mira and Sarpo Una.  It looks pretty good – apart from the cardboard bits.  While digging them I got an ear worm of “No Surprises” by Radiohead…”A heart that’s full up like a landfill…”

But this job is not going to kill me – it’s what makes me feel alive.

Fighting Spreads Across Gardening Fronts

Casualties of the Garden War

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”.

Then at least they might be able to catch a few.