WILD THING, YOU MAKE MY HEART SING
Another of the joys, and at times frustration, of allotmenteering is the many, and varied, creatures we either see, or have evidence of.
In Durley Field a small rather cute young fox has over the past couple of months taken to nonchantly walking across our plots quiet close to us. Last week I asked it whether I could take a picture to include in the blog, and the fox cub duly obliged – I could almost forgive it for digging up my leeks.
A rarer, well to Jeni and me, visitor last week was a green cricket sitting on the top of a calendula. To us it was rare because of its size – we guessed at just less than two inches. Consulting the guide book showed it to be the Great Green Bush-Cricket, the largest cricket in the UK. A welcome visitor, who sat happily on the calendula for two days, but had gone by the third,
But the animal which does most damage if left to its own devices is of course the badger. A couple of years ago Boris trampled down my sweet corn and tried to uproot my carrots. The strange thing about the attack on the carrots is that I was growing them in a box in the polytunnel 24 inches above the ground. You can see from the photo that they really made a determined attempt on the carrot, but was foiled by the size. I have now erected chicken wire fencing around the sweet corn bed, and put further doors on the polytunnel. That has so far thwarted Boris, and he has had to try elsewhere for his dinner.
