I don’t know what it is about me and gardening but all the animals seem to find it fascinating. If the chickens are in the garden and I pick up a fork or shovel – that’s it, they start clucking excitedly and get so close to me as they follow me about that I’m constantly in danger of either drop kicking one of them or falling over.
The cats are the same or worse.
If they’re in the house and they see my wellies being put on they are on red alert and instantly awake from whatever dream they were enjoying and run out of the door with me. As soon as I go out the garden it’s almost as if some sort of signal goes up and they magically appear from nowhere.
Unfortunately, the cats are not very helpful in the garden. One of their most irritating activities is to watch where I have just prepared the soil, lovingly weeding and raking, and then to use that area as a cat convenience. Even worse is when I have just sewn a row of seeds – this seems to excite some sort of weird need to create chaos, they mess the rows up and throw the earth and seeds about. I’ve taken to covering every area I plant with thorny cuttings from the hawthorn bushes that hedge most of the garden – it works to a certain extent. They seem to view it as some sort of cat Krypton Factor experiment and try to get in amongst the branches, ‘Enry the middle cat with his long hair gets the twigs stuck in his fur and then I have to cut them out and although its not a particularly successful deterrent I persevere.
The other annoying thing the cats do is dig up the onions and garlic. I expected this sort of thing from the birds. Winston in particular seems to become incensed at the tiny little onion points sticking out and I constantly find myself poking the bulbs back in watched by two angry little eyes.
I can’t really say that the cats are much help in the garden although they do chase the birds off the sweet corn and eat the spiders in the green houses but they are funny and it’s nice to have someone to talk to when I’m out there with several hundred bulbs to plant!
A bientôt
Janine
