Don’t you hate it when the internet is broke? Sorry about yesterday. We are right on the very steep edges of a black hole of nefarious internet coverage. Evidently there was a man up the only tower that can reach us. I guess he was reading the book because it took him two days to come down and give us the thumbs up!
The gardens had a set back yesterday. While I had my head turned to the firewood pile…
The peahens (not Kupa of course) …
crept into this garden …
and ate all the little tasty green baby cabbages and broccoli and onion, well just about everything actually. John is so furious he has gone even silenter than usual so today I have to build a pen for peafowl. They are to be locked up while the plants are little. “Trouble in the Gardens”. The other day I put my potted sunflowers out to get some sun and Tui and Pania climbed the step and ate every single one of them. In all fairness I have to say that the silent one just laughed when they ate all my sunflowers, but now the tables have turned!! Rather miserably. I have been over-feeding all the free range birds grain, at the barn, trying to head this off.
Ah well, I try desperately to take this kind of thing seriously but I have a chromosome missing and just cannot find anger at birds for doing what birds do. Once something is done it is done. Now we work out a way to ensure it is not done again. There are more cabbages – all is not lost.
Good morning. I will enclose the sunny side of the barn loft with strong chicken mesh. Most of the framework is there, it is huge and this is where they roost and hang out for most of the day anyway. When they are not skulking about where they do not belong. There are two advantages to this plan. Firstly the peahens have their nests up there so if they have chicks they will be catcheable. And secondly we will be able to stack the hay and straw right to the sides of the loft when the birds are free range again. The downside is carrying daily feed and water up the ladder.
Kupa will only be in there until the eggs are laid, then he can come out. I cannot bear to lock him up for long. The Duke of Kupa is special. He would never eat the king’s cabbages and he is not as sneaky as the girls.
Have a lovely day.
celi
On this day a year ago The Duke of Kupa had only just arrived and was being checked out by the barn flock. This made me laugh rereading it! c
The Kitchen's Garden 
71 responses to “Trouble in The Gardens.”
Birds and gardens can be a challenge – our geese ate our summer garden when quite established this year. I was not pleased.
Good luck with keeping the peahens caged.
Love Leanne
PS you can now watch NZ Country Calendar world wide – thought I’d mention this since your a kiwi gal.
Oh I used to LOVE country calender! c
I may have that same missing chromosome. But Internet coverage….I can get worked up over that!
Birds have no sense of smell, unlike mammals, they do know green and fresh and yummy, but hot foods like peppers and onions and garlic…they all taste the same….good! In fact I put cayenne pepper in liberal amounts in my chicken food to keep the mice away…works like a charm, ever so much better than other things.
Linda
http://coloradofarmlife.wordpress.com
Oh no. And Trouble in The Gardens is worse than “Trouble At Mill”…if you speak Yorkshire!
Cheeky birds. Naughty internet.
Glad to have you back! Show those peahens some pictures of oven ready birds 😉
I feel your frustration – I spend a lot of my time shooing the chickens off my flower beds! Luckily the veggie beds are fenced in with flopping chicken so they (and the cats) can’t get into them.
Must tell you I missed your post yesterday – to the extent I kept singing “Cecilia your breaking my heart, your shaking my confidence daily. Oh Cecilia I’m down on my knees, I’m begging you please to come home. come on home” from Simon and Garfunkel (but I am sure you knew that!) So glad your back!!
Oh no, sorry to have missed you yesterday, but I am back now and though it is blowing a gale out there.. literally, lets hope the connection holds in there.. c
My very first pet bunny ate my mother’s only corn she was growing on the balcony. Boy was she mad, poor bunny, but at least he did end up in a pot!
he did not end up in the pot of he did! I am hoping that is a typo and he did NOT! gave me a laugh though!.. c
Ha! I thought I checked it. No, he did not, thank god!
oh boy! at least i bet they loved it until you caught them. i hope your rain is on the way here. i have been fertilizing the gardens and today i am planting onions and we need the rain! joyce
so far nothing but extreme wind.. ! I can’t get out in the garden at all! c
It is a shame that the girls can’t be trusted with the tender new garden crop.
bad girls! c
Love the paragraph about having a chromosome missing. I’m with you!
Celi, I don’t think you’re missing anything. 🙂
Those peahens are shameless, and very fortunate that at the bottom of his silence John has a kind heart! At the least the solution has a double benefit.
A walrus tale of cabbages and kings – and with a duke thrown in!
Pet fauna attacking pet flora is one of our big hassles, too!
Miss C: you truly are a very, very nice person! If I had lost those tender seedlings my roar would have been heard at the next farmy and those peahens, birdbrained or not, would have known they were personae non grata! Personally am SO glad to see that woodpile diminish: that is simply too much extra work . . . we ‘lost’ our Summer Daylight Time this morning – nice to wake up when it’s light, but don’t want to think about the long evenings to come 😦 !
it is sad that for me to get my spring, you must drift back down into winter.. c’est la vie.. at least you will get some cooler evenings without the terrible fires, aussie is an extraordinary and unforgiving land… c