Garden Pride

We love our garden and it takes up a great deal of our time, but all the effort is well worth it when we start to benefit from some of its products.  This year, we planted more potatoes than ever before and, as an experiment, put them into old terracotta chimney liners.  The experiment has been a great success.

We like to think of our garden as a haven of peace, a place where, now that our cats are too old and lazy to chase them, the birds feel secure.  So it was exciting this morning to spot what is only the second bullfinch, a female, we've seen in Ormsaigbeg, working her way through the long grass in the vegetable garden, and it was even better....

....when she was joined by her mate. We're not the only ones who get excited about bullfinches.  DB has written saying, "We are in Salen by Acharacle and have had a male and female bullfinch in the garden for a couple of days now."

Some of our resident birds do take us for granted.  Our semi-tame young robin has, like all youngsters, discovered the joys of electronic communication, and has taken to 'phoning his friends, presumably to let them know how good the feeding is around here.

But there are limits to the welcome we extend to the local wildlife.  Hughie's pigs, which seem to be so out of control now that they must count as wildlife, were at our gate again yesterday afternoon.  The idea that they might get through the front gate and into our vegetable garden is.... painful.  We'll have to do what we've considered doing in the past, surround the property with razor wire, searchlights and watchtowers, and get G4S in to man them.