Steel Kitten

Fox Attack. The girls are gone.

Sometime while we were away Dusty, Cou and Zippy were taken by a fox. Cou was attacked in the coop, Dusty was hit near the pen fence and there was no sign of Zippy at all, not a ginger feather anywhere until we found her remains over the fence in the back hedge. I can only assume she was snatched without a struggle. Dusty put up a hell of a fight - it's heartbreaking to see the whole horrid drama laid out in an extensive pattern of feathers from the initial attack site all around the garden from top to bottom. But no blood, not a spec anywhere.

The fact that the fox got them was our fault - before we went away we switched the ducks and chickens around, brought the chicken coop out of the pen and put it in the garden to give the girls a chance to free range while we were away. We thought they'd really enjoy the freedom with the garden in it's spring state with all the new growth.

It was the opportunity the fox needed. We don't know why after having chickens and ducks in the garden for so long the fox had never visited and taken them - lord knows in our complacent moments it had the chance - but whatever the reason it's shaken us to come home and find an apologetic note on the kitchen work surface from our neighbours. We know we can't get any more chickens for a while, as the fox will now return to the garden periodically to check for new food. We need to leave some time.

That bothers me, as caring for chickens is a complex but rewarding experience that I will miss. Their ability to communicate is much more basic than a cat or dog and their behaviour far less easy to interpret. I'm sure I've grown a new network of brain neurons over the years figuring out their needs, and the brush with infectious bronchitis wrung emotions out if me I didn't know existed.

We all need the opportunity to stretch and grow that animals provide. Humans need animals to learn how to be human, to teach us how to love and empathise. Without them we languish into a self-absorbed selfish state where according to Thomas Aquinas "cruel habits might carry over into our treatment of human beings".

So we face the task of cleaning up the feathers, then finding out where the fox got in and blocking that off to protect the ducks better. We buried Zippy early this morning in front the willow hedge that she loved pitting her chicken wits against to reach my vegetables, and later on I'll go down to the garden centre and find a nice plant to mark the spot. I went into the back field to scan the hedgerows for any remains of the others but there was nothing. Georgie came with me all the way, there and back, trotting at my heel. Such a long walk for such a small pussycat. He was very nervous and skittish at the fenceline where the chickens we dragged. Probably the smell of fox musk and death still lingers.

 

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Cooking Italian style on Isola D'Elba

A more exotic variation of "Pork and Beans"

While no-one was looking I snuck away to an Italian island with hubby and mother-in-law.

I'm sure they think I'm mad. They're sitting in the sun reading. I'm compiling lists of foods to bring back. Every time I go near a shop I keep snuffling away bottles of olive oil and vinegar, packets of coffee, biscuits, and of course salami. I'm now making decisions about what clothes, books and toiletries to dump to cram more in.

I so wish I'd travelled lighter.

 

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The 252ft Wisteria

Ok, now I have Wisteria envy. The world's longest wisteria has been estimated to extend 252ft across a wall and taken 14 years to get it that way.

HOWEVER the owner has not seen it bloom in its totality until this year. Normally, only about 10% of the blooms survive the late spring frosts.

"Mrs Wilson, 56, started tending the wisteria in 1993, to replace the ivy that she and her husband had found growing on the wall when they moved into Wickham Place Farm near Witham, Essex.‘There was a very neglected wisteria growing on the other side of the wall,’ she said. ‘I began pruning it and training it to grow on this side of the wall. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just read from books what to do. Year on year it got bigger and bigger. It grew ten feet a year in each direction before reaching both ends of the wall six years ago."

You know, if having this late a spring means we get a nice summer and autumn and get to see these great plants in bloom like this, I'm happy to put up with the poor weather.

And before I forget, I'll share this tip with you about wisteria growing that I only found out yesterday (amazing how I'm still finding out these things about 5 years). Apparently, wisteria have to be throughly watered between July and September to set flower buds - a lack of water between these times and nothing will happen.

I wonder if all the rain last year was a key factor in mine flowering this year?

Reprieve

I told Martin I'd had enough of the damn wisteria. We bought and planted it in 2008, making sure it was a mature plant in full bloom as recommended. The hole was prepped well, the plant treated reverently and with the special care such a specimen deserved. From the second it went into the hole it looked awful. It barely grew. No matter what I did no more flowers were forthcoming. Ever. I slavishly followed advice from Alan Titchmarsh, the Royal Horticultural Society, and I scoured the gardening books in the library trying to glean any tidbits of information that I could. I even spoke to people who owned wisterias, creeping up and down driveways of some rather grand houses in the village that boasted amazing specimens, trying to get some insights.

By 2011 I'd had enough. I gave up and ignored it - no weeding, no feeding, no training, nothing. It wasn't making a jot of difference anyway. Still nothing happened. Of course.

Fast forward to this year I decided I wanted to plant another climber, and the only spot suitable was where the wisteria was sulking. So I hacked my way across the overgrown bed ready to rip the bugger out, prepare the ground and embark on a fun shopping expedition to find a new plant. And then suddenly there they were.

Flower buds. Big fat flower buds.

Nice timing wisteria. You've earned a reprieve.

 

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A nice surprise

The first fermentation 18 months ago

Guess who forgot she had 17 litres of pear cider in the house made in September 2011? Don't ask me how I could so comprehensively wipe out the memories of making the stuff like that. I put it all in a cool dark place under the little table that sits by my stove and promptly forgot all about it. I went under there last night looking for a missing pasta maker and got a shock when I found rows of bottles looking at me.

The surprises didn't stop there.

While hunting for the pasta maker I also found three litres of blackcurrant wine in an advanced state of fermentation hidden underneath a long tablecloth in the conservatory. It appears the wine had continued to ferment after I bottled it (in plastic not glass thank goodness) and the gas produced had nowhere to go. That has a tendency to happen when you absent-mindedly put a normal cap on the bottle instead of an airlock. The two bottles had taken on a distinctly telly-tubby appearance.

Fermentation was further confirmed when I slowly released the cap on one to reduce the straining plastic (as you would do on a bottle of carbonated drink) only to have it shoot off with a massive bang because there was a geyser of wine foam behind it that was desperate to shoot two feet in the air. The bottle continued to shoot foam in a rolling tsunami fashion for a further 20 seconds all over the counter top, all over my skirt, down the front and then the inside of the kitchen cupboards underneath before puddling at my feet.

I now have 2.25 litres of blackberry wine. And a lot of trepidation about approaching the second turgid bottle.

 

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