The highs and lows of nature

Strangely, I am not feeling all that grumpy today as last night Mrs GG was able to cook five vegetables to accompany our dinner, all of which came from the garden. We had some delicious new potatoes, Golden Acre cabbage, broad beans, spinach beet and chard – all of which were delicious.

A sad loss

On the grumpy side of the garden we have had a sad loss. We share the garden with a number of wild pheasant who seem to spend their days with us and fly off towards a little used railway line where they stay overnight in the bushes and hedges along the bank.

There is a small piece of pine woodland in our garden – not more than 40 trees but now very dense. To our delight we saw a hen come out on Thursday with a very young chick – no more than a couple of days old – which she proudly showed off to the other visiting pheasant.

An hour or so later we heard a lot of commotion with the cock pheasant making a lot of noise at a cat from a nearby house.

That darn cat!

We saw hen and chick on Saturday morning – and the wretched cat – but have not seen the chick since. The poor old hen did seem rather despondent but by Monday was back to her normal self. We have not seen the cat since. I know its nature, but it is nevertheless sad.

Water pain in the neck

On an equally grumpy note the weather forecasters continue to talk about heavy rain in our neck of the Midlands but, somehow, it manages to skirt around us.

So I’m continuing to have to water – a two-hour job – whilst villages no more than five miles away are under a deluge of rain.

We cannot even compensate ourselves by saying we are at least enjoying the sun – its grey and mirky and quite nippy at nights.

Hey ho.

Happy gardening folks

The Grumpy Gardener