Having been away from home for quite a while over the middle of summer, I was fully expecting handwritten notes all over my post when I got home, requesting that I do some urgent pruning if I wanted to keep getting letters delivered; oddly, this hadn't happened - I think we may have a different postman - but a combination of a lot of rain followed by sunshine had resulted in the garden looking more like a jungle, and the honeysuckle rampaging wildly all over the window.
Inside, it was like the Twilight Zone. The living room was more a living gloom, with nary a ray of sunlight penetrating the foliage. Think 'Sleeping Beauty's castle'....
After a week in the dark - I mean, is it normal to need to put the light on at nine in the morning in summer? - I decided that the time had come to do some chopping back, bees and scented flowers notwithstanding. Of course, as soon as I made the decision, it rained, and the entire thing became a dripping, sodden mass.
Job postponed.
This morning, with the sun shining and having made an early start anyway to take the car in to the garage for much-needed attention, the task of 'hunt the window' could be put off no longer. Secateurs in hand, I made a start, and was soon covered in twiggy bits, leaves and the occasional snail. The more I chopped into the overgrowth, the more snails I found, clinging to the undersides of leaves or swarming up tendrils. When I reached the window at last, I discovered that I had been demolishing a veritable snail hotel, as small reproachful eyestalks peered at me from the corners of the frame. Several of them slithered off into darker corners, in an obvious huff.
Standing in a mound of chopped-off foliage, I figured I'd upset them enough for now, and started to gather it up to put it in the bin. A snail waved at me from the bundle in my hands... so now I had to go through the whole pile and extract the residents.
Now, the bin is full, and there is light in the living room again.
But the snails are not happy with me.
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label garden. Show all posts
Monday, 20 August 2012
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Blackbird Hiatus.
Guess you may have been wondering where I’ve been.
My life has been subject to blackbirds. Comings and goings have all been closely monitored, and commented upon, usually loudly. To venture out through my door, for a while, became almost a crime, punishable by pain in the eardrums.
They have been nesting in the honeysuckle by the front door. I didn’t realise to start with until, looking out through the window one evening, I noticed the female with a huge beakful of grass and twigs, determinedly poking about in the leaves beside the window. To put this position into perspective, the nest was built at my eye level, halfway between the door and the front window, less than a metre from the door itself. Going in and out, I found myself confronted by a beady stare: what are you doing now? How dare you?
I guessed she was laying eggs after a week. Blackbirds have nested in the garden before, but usually without success; on the window-ledge, they were ousted by the jackdaws, in the fuchsia bush they gave up when it was very windy. Now there were two birds, taking turns in brooding whatever lay in the cup of the nest. I resisted the temptation to look and see how many eggs they had – if she wasn’t sitting when I went out, she was lurking in the bushes and chuntering at me, an under-the-breath muttering of ‘well, get on with it, go to work, go away’ that was oddly compelling. In the evenings I watched them through the window, high-fiving with wingtips as they changed over brooding duty. They are not very elegant birds, and did everything with a great fuss and kerfuffle.
Then came the day I saw her coming into the nest with a huge caterpillar. I rang Mum: ‘we have babies!!’ The female did most of the work, aided occasionally by her more laid-back mate, who seemed to expend most of his energies on singing from the TV aerial, announcing his territorial claims to the other blackbirds down the road, who tend to dispute his ownership of my small garden.
Feeding continued apace, more and more caterpillars sacrificed to growing young. I wanted to blog, to tell everyone, but had the uneasy feeling that to do so would be the kiss of death, so kept quiet. One evening, there was a great scuffling in the honeysuckle, a flurry of wings and an inexpert flapping. They had fledged. As is the way with blackbirds, they immediately hid, and kept very quiet, except when the youngsters tried to fly – this was more a controlled crashing around the shrubs. The starlings in the chimney fledged at around the same time and were nowhere near so discreet; flappings and shoutings and persistent demands for food from every rooftop and telephone wire. I think the blackbirds thought the neighbourhood had gone downhill.
I see them occasionally now, speckled brown and still inexpert, lurking around the garden, skulking amongst the plant pots. (I think there were at least two young raised.) My life is my own again, without the constant criticism.
A bit later in the year, I’ll take the old nest down, and use it at work to show the children how it’s done. Maybe they’ll try again next year.
My life has been subject to blackbirds. Comings and goings have all been closely monitored, and commented upon, usually loudly. To venture out through my door, for a while, became almost a crime, punishable by pain in the eardrums.
They have been nesting in the honeysuckle by the front door. I didn’t realise to start with until, looking out through the window one evening, I noticed the female with a huge beakful of grass and twigs, determinedly poking about in the leaves beside the window. To put this position into perspective, the nest was built at my eye level, halfway between the door and the front window, less than a metre from the door itself. Going in and out, I found myself confronted by a beady stare: what are you doing now? How dare you?
I guessed she was laying eggs after a week. Blackbirds have nested in the garden before, but usually without success; on the window-ledge, they were ousted by the jackdaws, in the fuchsia bush they gave up when it was very windy. Now there were two birds, taking turns in brooding whatever lay in the cup of the nest. I resisted the temptation to look and see how many eggs they had – if she wasn’t sitting when I went out, she was lurking in the bushes and chuntering at me, an under-the-breath muttering of ‘well, get on with it, go to work, go away’ that was oddly compelling. In the evenings I watched them through the window, high-fiving with wingtips as they changed over brooding duty. They are not very elegant birds, and did everything with a great fuss and kerfuffle.
Then came the day I saw her coming into the nest with a huge caterpillar. I rang Mum: ‘we have babies!!’ The female did most of the work, aided occasionally by her more laid-back mate, who seemed to expend most of his energies on singing from the TV aerial, announcing his territorial claims to the other blackbirds down the road, who tend to dispute his ownership of my small garden.
Feeding continued apace, more and more caterpillars sacrificed to growing young. I wanted to blog, to tell everyone, but had the uneasy feeling that to do so would be the kiss of death, so kept quiet. One evening, there was a great scuffling in the honeysuckle, a flurry of wings and an inexpert flapping. They had fledged. As is the way with blackbirds, they immediately hid, and kept very quiet, except when the youngsters tried to fly – this was more a controlled crashing around the shrubs. The starlings in the chimney fledged at around the same time and were nowhere near so discreet; flappings and shoutings and persistent demands for food from every rooftop and telephone wire. I think the blackbirds thought the neighbourhood had gone downhill.
I see them occasionally now, speckled brown and still inexpert, lurking around the garden, skulking amongst the plant pots. (I think there were at least two young raised.) My life is my own again, without the constant criticism.
A bit later in the year, I’ll take the old nest down, and use it at work to show the children how it’s done. Maybe they’ll try again next year.
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Sex and Violence in Suburbia
Early March, and there is an amphibian orgy at the bottom of my mother’s garden.
Go out in the dark and there is a constant sound, a low throbbing underlying the distant hum of traffic and the barking of the dog in the next street, audible even from my bedroom. It’s the croaking of frogs. Recent warm weather has spurred them into amorous action, and they have gathered in Mum’s ponds to indulge in some hot frog-on-frog action. Huge billows of spawn bear testament to their activities, and there is a mighty splashing whenever we venture down the garden path, as they dive below the surface in a flurry of waving legs. In twos and threes, or even more, they cling together, each male trying to grab hold of a compliant female, even if he has to share her with several other males. He locks his forelegs around her ponderous middle and hangs on until she’s ready to lay her eggs, to make sure he’s in the right place at the right time. But it’s a wise frog that knows its own father, as any one of the attendant males could be Mr Right. Sometimes their cumulative enthusiasm is too much, and the female is so beset by suitors that she drowns.
Feeling rather the voyeur, I venture down the garden and try to count heads (or legs). It’s a losing battle, as they pop up and vanish all over the place, in the ponds or in the undergrowth – I lose count at thirty, and under the reproachful stare of many gold-ringed amphibian eyes, retreat to the house.
In revenge, they croak loudly all night.
Go out in the dark and there is a constant sound, a low throbbing underlying the distant hum of traffic and the barking of the dog in the next street, audible even from my bedroom. It’s the croaking of frogs. Recent warm weather has spurred them into amorous action, and they have gathered in Mum’s ponds to indulge in some hot frog-on-frog action. Huge billows of spawn bear testament to their activities, and there is a mighty splashing whenever we venture down the garden path, as they dive below the surface in a flurry of waving legs. In twos and threes, or even more, they cling together, each male trying to grab hold of a compliant female, even if he has to share her with several other males. He locks his forelegs around her ponderous middle and hangs on until she’s ready to lay her eggs, to make sure he’s in the right place at the right time. But it’s a wise frog that knows its own father, as any one of the attendant males could be Mr Right. Sometimes their cumulative enthusiasm is too much, and the female is so beset by suitors that she drowns.
Feeling rather the voyeur, I venture down the garden and try to count heads (or legs). It’s a losing battle, as they pop up and vanish all over the place, in the ponds or in the undergrowth – I lose count at thirty, and under the reproachful stare of many gold-ringed amphibian eyes, retreat to the house.
In revenge, they croak loudly all night.
Thursday, 28 September 2006
Bee in his Bonnet?
The new postman doesn’t like my garden. There are too many things in it. He leaves me notes – ‘can you cut back your bushes because of the bees’. He threatens to leave my post at other houses. I feel like saying – you’re a postman, you should be brave – after all, what about dogs? Surely a few bees aren’t a problem? They don’t want to bite your ankles! If I’m home, I see him bending down as he pass the window, preparing to duck under the honeysuckles that run along the wall and over the front door - and incidentally act as a porch, giving shelter when I come home in the rain and am grovelling about in my bag or pocket trying to find my keys. He doesn’t like the honeysuckle 'massive'. It has bees. And moths. And spiders. And various other wildlife. It shelters my snails. And one part of it has big blousy cream and pink flowers in summer, and the other has smaller, delicate white and cream flowers in the early spring, sometimes when the snow is still on the ground, and it defies the worst of the weather.
I don’t think he likes the fuchsia bush by the gate either. From small beginnings it has grown to about two metres in height, and three wide, and at this time of year it’s dripping with red and purple flowers, humming with honey and bumble bees, a clarion call of colour as the sere shades of autumn creep into the rest of the garden. But it doesn’t get in the way. It’s been trimmed back so it doesn’t hang too far over the wall, or get in the way as you come through the gate. There’s a clematis somewhere in the mix as well, a small-flowered blue alpine one, with feathery seed-heads late in the season. This also defies the weather and the salt wind to surprise me with its delicacy and toughness.
The last postman liked my garden – since he’s retired (and taken the job of school crossing guard) he also delivers papers, and we swap gardening thoughts and seeds as the year goes round.
But we all have to get on, and so every so often, I trim the honeysuckle. But not very often!
I don’t think he likes the fuchsia bush by the gate either. From small beginnings it has grown to about two metres in height, and three wide, and at this time of year it’s dripping with red and purple flowers, humming with honey and bumble bees, a clarion call of colour as the sere shades of autumn creep into the rest of the garden. But it doesn’t get in the way. It’s been trimmed back so it doesn’t hang too far over the wall, or get in the way as you come through the gate. There’s a clematis somewhere in the mix as well, a small-flowered blue alpine one, with feathery seed-heads late in the season. This also defies the weather and the salt wind to surprise me with its delicacy and toughness.
The last postman liked my garden – since he’s retired (and taken the job of school crossing guard) he also delivers papers, and we swap gardening thoughts and seeds as the year goes round.
But we all have to get on, and so every so often, I trim the honeysuckle. But not very often!
Wednesday, 2 August 2006
Life’s Little Mysteries (3)
The weather, never settled for long, has changed again. After baking heat - always welcome when venturing into the city to shop (aye, right!) - Saturday night brought heavy rain. Driving home late, I became aware that things were moving in the headlights’ beam. Frogs. Lots of frogs. They’ve spent the hot spell hidden under the dry stone walls or in deep undergrowth, until the rain came. Then it’s way-hay! Look chaps - puddles! Which made driving the back roads rather more akin to a slalom course, avoiding frogicide.
Arriving home, we unpacked the car; another slalom session as we avoided the snails sliding happily across the path. With rain dripping down my neck from the tailgate of the car, I turned and noticed around fifteen on the end wall of the house, all heading upwards. One slid purposefully up the edge of the gable; all seemed bent on reaching the roof, or even the chimneystack. Those on the path made their slow and stately way to the wall, and proceeded upwards. I couldn’t see anything up there that might attract their attention, no algae, no moss, no tempting plants at all.
Were they trying to tell me that flood were expected? Is there a snail nightclub somewhere on my roof? Do they gather up there in the first rain after the last full moon in July for some esoteric snail ritual? Baffled, I took the last of the shopping indoors and went to dry off.
In the morning there were no snails to be seen. And none that night on the window pane. I began to wonder if some silent interstellar space-shell had descended in the damp night and taken them away, to report on their observations of Earth life.
Wherever they went, it was a short trip - five were back last night. Of course, it was ‘Mastermind’ and ‘University Challenge’ on the TV. How else can interstellar snails learn?
Arriving home, we unpacked the car; another slalom session as we avoided the snails sliding happily across the path. With rain dripping down my neck from the tailgate of the car, I turned and noticed around fifteen on the end wall of the house, all heading upwards. One slid purposefully up the edge of the gable; all seemed bent on reaching the roof, or even the chimneystack. Those on the path made their slow and stately way to the wall, and proceeded upwards. I couldn’t see anything up there that might attract their attention, no algae, no moss, no tempting plants at all.
Were they trying to tell me that flood were expected? Is there a snail nightclub somewhere on my roof? Do they gather up there in the first rain after the last full moon in July for some esoteric snail ritual? Baffled, I took the last of the shopping indoors and went to dry off.
In the morning there were no snails to be seen. And none that night on the window pane. I began to wonder if some silent interstellar space-shell had descended in the damp night and taken them away, to report on their observations of Earth life.
Wherever they went, it was a short trip - five were back last night. Of course, it was ‘Mastermind’ and ‘University Challenge’ on the TV. How else can interstellar snails learn?
Friday, 21 July 2006
Life in Slow Motion
The snails live on the walls of my garden, hiding under the shrubs, or clustered together in the evenings on the living room window, where they gather under the edge of the sash frame. Are they watching the TV? On wet nights they can be found idly perambulating across the path, and in the morning as I go to work I see their silvery trails across the doormat, or on a plant pot or two. I don’t begrudge them the small amount of damage they do; for some reason I find snails quite appealing. Slugs, on the other hand, have little to recommend them; they lurk under the rims of the plant pots, lumps of slime and gristle that surprise your fingers when you go to move the pot. I find it odd that I regard them so differently. What difference does a shell make? The snails, I will admit, are great performers when, on occasion, I take them to schools. Set on the back of my hand, they soon come out of their shells and extend their long eyestalks, peering myopically at the children as if to say ‘What’s this? Who are you?’ The children, for their part, seem equally fascinated by their small alien visitors, and talk back to them.
Snails in this part of the world are usually found at the seaside. Most of the underlying native rock is granite, which doesn’t provide sufficient calcium for them to grow their shells; by the sea, they take advantage of the crushed shell in the sandy soil, taken up by the plants that they eat, and they grow to the size of golf balls. It must be a precarious existence in some ways, being close to the sea. After all, how many of us have gone out with the salt pot at night to put an end to crawling lettuce lovers?
The warm, damp weather has spiced up the lives of the snails on the walls. Yesterday Mum caught several of them flagrantly mating, moistly entwined amid the foliage. Snails love-lives are complex; they are hermaphrodite, so each fertilises the other. In courtship - for snails do choose their partners - they fire small ‘arrows’ at each other, reeling each other in on thin white thread until their bodies are pressed together. D-I-Y Cupid? Or have they been watching old westerns on the TV, in the evenings? Whichever, I wait for the eggs to appear, and a new generation of snails to make their slow way to the window pane.
Snails in this part of the world are usually found at the seaside. Most of the underlying native rock is granite, which doesn’t provide sufficient calcium for them to grow their shells; by the sea, they take advantage of the crushed shell in the sandy soil, taken up by the plants that they eat, and they grow to the size of golf balls. It must be a precarious existence in some ways, being close to the sea. After all, how many of us have gone out with the salt pot at night to put an end to crawling lettuce lovers?
The warm, damp weather has spiced up the lives of the snails on the walls. Yesterday Mum caught several of them flagrantly mating, moistly entwined amid the foliage. Snails love-lives are complex; they are hermaphrodite, so each fertilises the other. In courtship - for snails do choose their partners - they fire small ‘arrows’ at each other, reeling each other in on thin white thread until their bodies are pressed together. D-I-Y Cupid? Or have they been watching old westerns on the TV, in the evenings? Whichever, I wait for the eggs to appear, and a new generation of snails to make their slow way to the window pane.
Tuesday, 11 July 2006
Take Your Partner for the Hedgehog Waltz.
The hedgehog situation grows more complex.
Tonight, our small visitor turns up for her mealworms as usual, only to be joined after about ten minutes by another, larger, hedgehog.
He is slightly lighter coloured, and a bit scruffier - designer stubble? He feeds his face briefly, before his mind turns to other things.
He begins to snuffle at 'our' hedgehog, and they begin a long slow dance around the lawn. He snuffles his way towards her back end, she backs away, and they gradually go round in a series of small spirals, orbitting around the end of her nose. She sits down firmly, making a point; he snuffles along her side, she gets up and backs away, he changes direction - is he getting dizzy by now? - they swing like a small binary star across the lawn and under the azaleas. The bushes shake. The pair emerge, rotating back across to the rockery, and back once more to the azaleas. Is she really not interested or is she merely being coy? She certainly doesn't take the opportunity to escape when he briefly backs off.
They vanish again, and the bushes tremble. It's getting hard to see what's going on, and to be honest I'm beginning to feel a little voyeuristic. Mum peers out of the back door and comes in to report that they are sitting side by side under the arch that leads to the lawn, under a rainbow of clematis. Hmm. Has she succumbed to his rough charms? No - merely a brief break in the dance - they head off in front of the garage, still circling.
It's a long slow courtship, with hedgehogs. And a very careful one.
Tonight, our small visitor turns up for her mealworms as usual, only to be joined after about ten minutes by another, larger, hedgehog.
He is slightly lighter coloured, and a bit scruffier - designer stubble? He feeds his face briefly, before his mind turns to other things.
He begins to snuffle at 'our' hedgehog, and they begin a long slow dance around the lawn. He snuffles his way towards her back end, she backs away, and they gradually go round in a series of small spirals, orbitting around the end of her nose. She sits down firmly, making a point; he snuffles along her side, she gets up and backs away, he changes direction - is he getting dizzy by now? - they swing like a small binary star across the lawn and under the azaleas. The bushes shake. The pair emerge, rotating back across to the rockery, and back once more to the azaleas. Is she really not interested or is she merely being coy? She certainly doesn't take the opportunity to escape when he briefly backs off.
They vanish again, and the bushes tremble. It's getting hard to see what's going on, and to be honest I'm beginning to feel a little voyeuristic. Mum peers out of the back door and comes in to report that they are sitting side by side under the arch that leads to the lawn, under a rainbow of clematis. Hmm. Has she succumbed to his rough charms? No - merely a brief break in the dance - they head off in front of the garage, still circling.
It's a long slow courtship, with hedgehogs. And a very careful one.
Wednesday, 5 July 2006
The Visitors
Hummingbird Hawk Moth – 3 Jul 06
Waiting for the bus, conveniently outside the house, we’re inspecting the shrubs that grow over the wall, debating how far they need to be trimmed back to prevent decapitation of passing pavement cyclists, and how high they need to be cut back off the ground to prevent dogs using the convenient cover as – well, a 'convenience' – when we notice something strange in the honeysuckle.
A hummingbird hawkmoth. Flashing subliminal terracotta red hindwings, soft beige and black-and-white-striped body, hovering beside the flowers, extending its long proboscis like a refuelling probe on a fighter aircraft connecting with the tanker, it moves with delicate precision.
Is this an indicator of warmer summers? We haven’t seen one here for over 20 years. We watch it working over the flowers, until it vanishes with speed somewhere over the garden wall, and the bus arrives.
Hedgehog – 4 Jul 06
Mum peers out of the back window, and whispers.
‘She’s here.’
It looks like someone has left an old coconut on the lawn. Snuffling about, minutely inspecting each blade of grass, each small patch of the lawn for the dried mealworms my mother leaves out. Heat and hard ground mean fewer worms and beetles, so every little helps. Almost every night she comes – Mrs Tiggywinkle in person - around 9.30 to 10 pm. Sometimes she lingers, but mostly she stays for about 20 minutes. Well, we don’t really know if she is really a ‘she’, but we make an educated guess. She’s small and neat, light brown fur edging a tidy bristle-cut hair-do, black-eyed and black-nosed. She has surprisingly long legs, moving with a rolling sailor’s gait. Trundling about like a small clockwork toy, leaving a trail through the grass, she disappears into the undergrowth of the flowerbeds, to reappear and cross the path before vanishing into the gathering darkness under the hawthorn tree at the bottom of the garden.
‘Think I’d better get some more mealworms,’ says Mum.
Waiting for the bus, conveniently outside the house, we’re inspecting the shrubs that grow over the wall, debating how far they need to be trimmed back to prevent decapitation of passing pavement cyclists, and how high they need to be cut back off the ground to prevent dogs using the convenient cover as – well, a 'convenience' – when we notice something strange in the honeysuckle.
A hummingbird hawkmoth. Flashing subliminal terracotta red hindwings, soft beige and black-and-white-striped body, hovering beside the flowers, extending its long proboscis like a refuelling probe on a fighter aircraft connecting with the tanker, it moves with delicate precision.
Is this an indicator of warmer summers? We haven’t seen one here for over 20 years. We watch it working over the flowers, until it vanishes with speed somewhere over the garden wall, and the bus arrives.
Hedgehog – 4 Jul 06
Mum peers out of the back window, and whispers.
‘She’s here.’
It looks like someone has left an old coconut on the lawn. Snuffling about, minutely inspecting each blade of grass, each small patch of the lawn for the dried mealworms my mother leaves out. Heat and hard ground mean fewer worms and beetles, so every little helps. Almost every night she comes – Mrs Tiggywinkle in person - around 9.30 to 10 pm. Sometimes she lingers, but mostly she stays for about 20 minutes. Well, we don’t really know if she is really a ‘she’, but we make an educated guess. She’s small and neat, light brown fur edging a tidy bristle-cut hair-do, black-eyed and black-nosed. She has surprisingly long legs, moving with a rolling sailor’s gait. Trundling about like a small clockwork toy, leaving a trail through the grass, she disappears into the undergrowth of the flowerbeds, to reappear and cross the path before vanishing into the gathering darkness under the hawthorn tree at the bottom of the garden.
‘Think I’d better get some more mealworms,’ says Mum.
Thursday, 22 June 2006
SPLAT!
splat. a fat raindrop
falls from wet honeysuckle
down dry back of neck.
Hmm. I guess I should trim the greenery round the front door, but it's growing so well!
Yesterday was a splatty sort of day. The song says 'sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug' - but why, with around one-and-a-half square metres of windshield, does the bug always splat right where I look out of it most of the time? And why, if there are a lot of bugs, is it always the biggest, juiciest, most messy bug that splats in this position?
Why is it that if I am behind a lorry, it's nearly always one carrying wet gravel (splat - dirty wet mud all over the front of the car) or a refrigerated fish wagon (splat - salty fishy water all over the front of the car)??
And this is the point where I discover that the washer bottle has now run dry, after bug removal. Deep joy.
And then there was the gull that whitewashed my windscreen on a roundabout in Great Yarmouth...but that's another story.
Summer is definitely here - that harbinger of the season, 'unfeasibly extensive roadworks', is seen in the land.......
Red light. More roadworks.
Lots of men doing nothing.
A two mile tail-back.
falls from wet honeysuckle
down dry back of neck.
Hmm. I guess I should trim the greenery round the front door, but it's growing so well!
Yesterday was a splatty sort of day. The song says 'sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug' - but why, with around one-and-a-half square metres of windshield, does the bug always splat right where I look out of it most of the time? And why, if there are a lot of bugs, is it always the biggest, juiciest, most messy bug that splats in this position?
Why is it that if I am behind a lorry, it's nearly always one carrying wet gravel (splat - dirty wet mud all over the front of the car) or a refrigerated fish wagon (splat - salty fishy water all over the front of the car)??
And this is the point where I discover that the washer bottle has now run dry, after bug removal. Deep joy.
And then there was the gull that whitewashed my windscreen on a roundabout in Great Yarmouth...but that's another story.
Summer is definitely here - that harbinger of the season, 'unfeasibly extensive roadworks', is seen in the land.......
Red light. More roadworks.
Lots of men doing nothing.
A two mile tail-back.
Tuesday, 20 June 2006
No safety in numbers
So I blearily stumbled out of my door this morning to take out the trash and thought - where the heck's the bowl of flowers? Some b*stard's nicked some of my plant pots!
Now I know my garden's overgrown - (but it's intentionally like that, the owner squeaked) - but nicking my plant pots is a bit much! By the look of it, there's three gone. It's difficult to tell, as I have a lot of them - it's a small garden with a chunk of concrete -hence pots on the hardstanding - but it looks like the ones that are currently out (like - flowering with a vengeance, looking great, cost a lot!) are among the vanished. Rhodohypoxis, I mourn thee - ten years I've had these, and they've dutifully flowered every spring/summer, they have been the subject of mystery - why did I plant half red bulbs, half white, and they all end up white? - they have cheered me up every year. Gone, now, probably to some a**hole's stall at a car-boot sale. It's not as if it would be awfully easy - walking down the road with a pot of plants would be a bit obvious, let alone several - has to be a car heist. And they'd have to be looking closely - the garden ain't that self-evident.
What, or who, can profit in plant-pot heists?
Now I know my garden's overgrown - (but it's intentionally like that, the owner squeaked) - but nicking my plant pots is a bit much! By the look of it, there's three gone. It's difficult to tell, as I have a lot of them - it's a small garden with a chunk of concrete -hence pots on the hardstanding - but it looks like the ones that are currently out (like - flowering with a vengeance, looking great, cost a lot!) are among the vanished. Rhodohypoxis, I mourn thee - ten years I've had these, and they've dutifully flowered every spring/summer, they have been the subject of mystery - why did I plant half red bulbs, half white, and they all end up white? - they have cheered me up every year. Gone, now, probably to some a**hole's stall at a car-boot sale. It's not as if it would be awfully easy - walking down the road with a pot of plants would be a bit obvious, let alone several - has to be a car heist. And they'd have to be looking closely - the garden ain't that self-evident.
What, or who, can profit in plant-pot heists?
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