Rampant Rabbits

We arrived on Monday morning armed with some secret weapons in the battle of the bunnies, Alyson had brought her dog Masie and we had decided to initiate Chumdog into the joys of the chase, he's not bad with cats and pigeons so we hoped it might awaken his inner beast! True to form Shandy flushed a big rabbit straight away but it gave us all the slip, running back through the wire netting through which it had managed to chew a hole, that's the last time we buy cheap foreign stuff. Seconds later a baby bun appeared which Shandy soon polished off, unfortunately she then spent the rest of the time defending her catch from the other dogs which sort of defeated the object, as no other rabbits were caught that morning. Not that Chumdog was much use anyway as he spent most of his time eating rotten apples and rabbit poo before falling in the pond! I kid you not. We then made a tactical decision and filled in all the holes under the hedges with large boulders, we are determined that even if this battle was lost we will win the war. Later we started building plant supports in the main border, a job I always find interesting as every structure develops differently and also gives much needed height to the landscape at this time of year.

"Hallo Rabbit" He said, "Is that you"?
"Lets pretend it isn't" Said rabbit "And see what happens........"
A A Milne

The Chase

Well our efforts to thwart the rabbits are already paying off, on Monday we managed to completely net around the first hedge and it was easy to see the results when we arrived this morning. Although we could tell some of the critters had managed to scramble over the barrier they couldn't then get back to their refuge. It wasn't long before Shandy flushed one out, a pretty big one too, but we just couldn't catch it despite running around in circles trying to keep an eye on where it had gone to ground. Eventually however it made a fatal mistake by taking shelter underneath the old pump, by this time Shandy was furiously barking and ripping chunks out of the wood so we decided to dismantle the planks. Unbelievably the rabbit managed to climb halfway up before being blocked by the pipe and Giles had to reach inside and grab the unfortunate bun by the legs! Needless to say Shandy finished it off pretty quickly and then trotted off to bury her prize. We finished netting the other hedge this afternoon and have been warned to bring our running shoes next time for the great rabbit flush out, there's never a dull moment at Norton Conyers!

"I flee who chases me, and chase who flees me"
Ovid

 

The Barrier

The weather was not so kind to us first thing on Thursday morning so we retreated into the peach house for a dry start. The over wintered salvias were in need of pruning, the peach trees needed help in ridding themselves of dead leaves and red spider mite webs, and finally the emerging freesias  need supporting with twiggy sticks. After tea break we then brushed down and treated the outside benches with linseed oil which smells lovely, and pruned the apple trees in the iris border. Winter sunshine after lunch meant we could no longer delay a dreaded task, despite Shandy's best efforts we are still plagued with rabbits which delight in evading capture by residing under the yew hedges, so it was decided to net them. This entails digging down a good spades depth, inserting the wire underneath and burying it before bending the net upwards and staking it in place. The yew will grow through and hide the wire and after a year or two we should be able to remove the stakes. One side of one hedge took us all afternoon and the other side means digging through turf, not an easy task, oh well three more side to go and we may achieve our goal of being rabbit free!

A quote in honour of Valentines day and barriers

"Love recognises no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope"
Maya Angelou

Lets just hope the rabbits don't live by this sentiment!

A Rare Delight

Yesterday we made the most of that rare delight, a beautiful February day. Despite a frost it was ideal planting conditions for bare roots as the sun quickly penetrated the soil which for once wasn't soggy. We started the renovation of the soft fruit garden which we will extend to hold the vegetables and eventually net against the rabbits. To begin with the new beech hedge had to be installed, this took all morning and extended all the way down to the wall at the far end of the picture, it will help to shelter the produce and make more of a feature of what had become pretty weed infested rows of autumn raspberries. These old canes have been weed killed and in the afternoon we planted sixty new ones at the bottom end of the patch, keeping all the soft fruit together whilst opening up a large new area for root crops. Just when I thought the day was going rather well we moved onto gooseberry pruning for the last hour, my most hated task in the garden due to those ghastly thorns, but even that task wasn't so bad on such a glorious day.

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden"
Thomas Jefferson

Small Mercies

And we are thankful for them in dreary February! We crept back into the garden again on Monday morning for an hour or two of tidying up, it was exciting to note the differences that have occurred since we were last there over a month ago, and a joy to greet the very first spring flowers. We still have a long way to go before we can breath easier over the weather but these little beauties reaffirm that winter will not last for ever.
Then we returned to the woods with this years crop of new trees to plant, quickly filling up all the spaces we created in January with oak, lime, hazel, beech, hornbeam, euonymus, blackthorn and cherry. If only they would grow quickly enough for us to see them in their prime!

"The flowers of late winter and early spring occupy places in our hearts well out of proportion to their size"
Gertrude S. Wister