The lazy gardener - blasted rats!

Julia Nerys Parry

I am more than usually appreciative of Marvellous Mike lately. Not only did he write a short story thus titled (when he was twelve), he has dedicated himself with a will to attempting to rat-proof my chicken run. We devised a method of dropping poison bricks down their holes and jamming in a fist-sized bolus of chicken wire then tamping it all down with soil. The rats can’t gnaw through the wire and the chickens don’t like scratching at dirt that has nasty wire in it. The size of the dead rats we found would make you shudder. I rather suspect it was the rats that stole my stash of Jerusalem artichokes. I leave them in their own larder of soil (as I do with potatoes) but the enormous quantity depicted in last month’s column has vanished. I only got about three meals out of them.

The garden has gone still and almost dormant. In its own way it is beautiful. I’m mindful of Christina Rossetti’s beautiful poem: In the bleak mid-winter/Frosty wind made moan/Earth stood hard as iron/Water like a stone (and the beautiful Gustav Holst hymn of the same name). We haven’t had moaning wind so much, but the air is stone cold and there have been frosts. What is revealed at this time of the year is the natural structure of the garden. You see the way tree limbs have arrayed themselves; you see the stubborn hardiness of perennials; you see the stark glory of seed heads wreathed with frost. Some mornings have been awfully cold. What follows, though, are glorious sunshiny days and clear cerulean skies.

So, garden tasks: are your leaves raked and gifted to your compost or layered over garlic beds? Have your roses stopped flowering, so as to give you permission to cut them back? Are you keeping your bird baths free of ice? You’ll have noticed that finches descend on gardens that allow seed heads to form. I delight watching these beauties while I drink my morning coffee. They flit and dart all around the garden at dawn. Sadly, the light has been too poor to take any decent photos of them, but those of you who are up before the dawn will know of which I write. But now is the time to fill your bird feeders to tide over your birds.