An evening visit

Yesterday evening Mum spotted a hedgehog at the end of our drive, just ambling along. I went outside to say hello as it headed down the pavement and into the road. To keep it safe I accompanied the hedgehog on its way. We were in the middle of the road when a car appeared around the corner. I stopped it coming any further and mowing down me and the ‘hog with a – perhaps slightly over-officious – raise of my hand, the driver being happy to stop when she saw who was crossing. The hedgehog had now given up on the idea of going much further and so I tried to scoot it across the road with my bare foot, but it turns out that hedgehogs don’t slide very well. Dad then appeared with a pair of oven gloves and scooped up the ball of spines out of the way.

We took it into the back garden to play with for a little while, taking photos and watching it scurry about with surprising speed. I like to think that it then spent the night in my vegetable patch clearing it of any remaining slugs and bad beasts. Or, if it didn’t, that the thunderstorm that followed that night washed them all away instead.

Click for the set

I didn’t plant these either

First of all we get potatoes coming to the party and now we get a variety of pests coming to join the fun uninvited. The blisters on the beetroot leaves are made by mangold fly maggots, which could eventually kill the whole plant if left to their own devices. So I removed the blistered leaves and disposed of them. Or, as in this case, cut open the blister and photographed the icky maggots. Then disposed of them.

In an English textbook garden

I think that a number of my vegetables have got hold of my gardening book at some point. They’ve read it and paid particular attention to the “Troubles” section. Mmm, they thought to themselves, in what clichéd way could we be slightly annoying now? We’re not growing all that fast and that’s already ticking off Little Miss Impatient. Let’s see if we can also throw in a few things from the book…

Mangold fly – Leaf miner – set up home in a few leaves of my beetroot plants. Those leaves have now been removed, staining my thumbnail pink.

The blotches on my aubergine leaves were caused by exactly what the book said – red spider mites. You may consider those mites found and smeared into the ground.

My cucumber plant didn’t choose a high enough SPF and got scalded by the sun.

As did a few tomato leaves here and there. Because why come up with something new if you can just copy what the cucumber did?

Oh, ok, this tomato got a bit more inventive. Its top was bitten clean off by an idiot slug in the night and now it’s growing a new bit.

Stoopid vegetables.

The cute hides, but I find it

Yesterday evening I caught sight of a couple of balls of fluff hiding in the viburnum bush in the garden. Two baby sparrows had been stored there while their parents went off to a rave. A rave nearby, as I could hear the occasional protective cheep. The two babies were quite content to sit there quietly among the close branches, so I grabbed my big zoom and broke my arms with it taking photos of them bobbing about, yawning, fluttering their wings and trying to eat each other.

Click for the set

The good, the bad and the ugly

The Good: a cluster of ladybird larvae, getting ready to chew on the following …

The Bad: greenfly

The Ugly: blackfly

Fortunately that last photo doesn’t show any ants doing all the pervy stroking they are wont to do in order to milk these buggers. Gruesome. All this helpful and unhelpful wildlife is currently to be found on the hibiscus in the garden. Friend and foe having set up camp within inches of each other on the juicy new growth of the shrub. Of course my trigger finger might yet have something to say about the enemy settlements, accompanying as it does the rest of my body when I go to peer at the plants in the evening. Not too closely though, because you might find …

OMG AN ENORMOUS MAN-EATING SPIDER, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!

Or, you know, don’t. Whatever.

Twisty beans

Positive thigmatropism, said my partner in grime. I looked it up and she’s right. Twisty runner beans are starting to grab onto the strings I put up for them and are showing signs of new growth. The sun is shining after a rainy day yesterday and so the plants should feel free to grow a few inches today. And the slug that’s made the leaves of one of my cucumbers look like a doily should feel free to chew on a slug pellet.

Breaking the internet meme by meme

So Thursday did this meme and tagged me for it. And I read the rules and was like, well, they’re dumb, ’cause everyone has to change a question AND add a question and if this meme makes it another week around the net, it’s going to be 300 questions long. So I checked the blog of Sas, who had tagged Thursday. And I counted the questions. And discovered that Thursday hadn’t even followed the crazy rules herself. She’d been all wilful and shit. So I totally called her on it and she was like, *sigh*, and told me I had to change a question and add a question. So I counted up her questions again and was like, yeah, but you didn’t even do that. And then she was like, oh, well do whatever you want, I’m busy. And I was like, yeah, well I’m busy too and went back to wiping pollen off the window sill.

1. What is your current obsession?
This morning it was counting how many questions Thursday had changed/answered in this meme.

2. What is your weirdest obsession?
Probably my Statcounter habit. Hello, repetitive behaviour.

3. What are you wearing today?
Brown cords, green vest top, black v-neck jumper. Bright pink socks.

4. What’s for dinner?
Salmon, apparently. I asked.

5. What would you eat for your last meal?
Curry maybe, just to give the pathologist a fun time.

6. What’s the last thing you bought?
On the card: Train tickets to London when Suzy and I went to see Much Ado About Nothing at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park. Where I took this Twitpic that never arrived in my Twitter feed.

7. What are you listening to right now?
Nothing. I’d hoped to have got round to putting on my headphones by the time I got here … Ok, iPod found and songs shuffled until something caught my fancy: “Oben und Unten” by Hubert von Goisern.

8. What do you think of the person who tagged you?
When I’m working in my garden I imagine her with me, reclined in a deck chair, looking all suave and elegant, sipping a drink that has a far higher alcoholic content than anyone realises, and bragging about her sweetcorn.

9. If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?

Salzburg, with a view of the Untersberg. I know what the Gaisberg looks like (the big antenna on top is a bit of a giveaway, unless of course the mist has come down upon it) and I need to learn the shape of the Untersberg next. And if I’m charge of furnishing this house, it’ll have carpet – which tends not to happen over on the continent.

10. If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
Salzburg, to oversee the fitting of my carpets.

11. Which language do you want to learn?
I’m really good at German, but to be better would be great. To be able to write something for publication without having to wait for someone to check it. Or to manage to ask someone “what’s up?” without inadvertently asking them “What’s missing from your life?” Or to call someone my man on the spot without telling him he’s my man on the toilet instead.

12. What is your favourite colour?
#006666

13. What is your favourite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
The short-sleeved top I have in #006666 is currently high on my list. As is this black jumper.

14. What is your dream job?
Some sort of web-editing, photography-based job that pays a stinkload of money and leaves me plenty of time for staring out of the window.

15. Describe your personal style?
Pfft. I always feel that I don’t have one. So much comes down to what I can get to fit my shape – a rack that sits under my chin, a backside on which you could rest your dinner and legs that would be of no use at all were a pig to be loose in a passage. But slap on some mascara and a fancy pair of earrings and it all comes together somehow.

16. What’s your favourite tree?
Silver birch.

17. What are you going to do after this?
Look at Statcounter. Duh.

18. What’s your favourite fruit?
I do like a raspberry.

19. What inspires you?
Bright colours, portrait photography, quiet moments.

20. What are you currently reading?
The Week and “It Sucked And Then I Cried” by the internet’s very own Heather B. Armstrong.

21. What delighted you the most today?
Turning on my iPod.

22. By what criteria do you judge a person?
Whether or not they obey the rules of memes.
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Your job: Answer one of these questions in the comments