The Long Grass

[That's not me in amongst the brambles - see below for explanation]

The grass had been left too long for this to be an easy cut, but a recent Sunday came when the rain had stopped and there was an unfamiliar heat coming from the sky.  By mid afternoon the lawn was still covered in dew but this was about as good as it was going to get for the final cut of the year.

The flymo didn't much like the soft earth, it juddered and scraped into it with every forward thrust, gauging out a furrow.  But it also succeeded in cutting away the long grass which was the main aim.  An opportunist robin searched for insects and worms several yards from where I was working, always in the corner of my eye or behind my back it dodged my gaze with brilliant cunning.

Once I was done, I carried the freshly mowed grass to the edge of the garden where the previous grass had become a habitat for beetles and worms.  A cloud of midges hung over the debris and I emptied the bag of compost over them.  They scattered for a while and then reformed exactly as they had been before I arrived. 

I noticed that the brambles had hidden themselves among the rambling border and sent several barbed tentacles through the domestic plants.  Tangling themselves deliberately through the desired inhabitants I wouldn't have noticed them if they had kept to the border and not created a tripping hazard across the path.  One job leads to another when you start on a garden.

The brambles

You couldn't rip out these great arms of barbed vegetation with your bare hands.  They needed handling with leather gloves and cutting away at the base with a razor sharp instrument of some kind.  I used a kitchen knife, though I know we have some secateurs somewhere, but they've been eaten by the house like everything else that is, on rare occasions, extremely useful.

I worked my way back down the tentacle of thorns to find where it was coming from.  Deliberately the plant had positioned itself in a crevice beneath a broken stone of the leaning wall.  Digging out the root system wasn't going to be easy, in fact it wasn't going to happen because I hadn't planned on this job anyway.  So I cut and pulled at each of the tentacles and removed them as near the base as I could get.

The longest of the brambles I had removed was about seven feet long and its stem was about a half an inch thick at the base.  I folded it carefully up into a half circle half ball as it snagged and tore at my clothing.  Then I shoved it beneath the hedge and watched it unfold like a still living things.

Brambles have achieved in Hawaii what the Japanese Knotweed has achieved in this country - the status as a ferocious and invasive weed, smothering and killing local crops.  The story is a familiar one, the plant was introduced for ornamental reasons and its favoured crop of blackberries, but it has no natural enemy in an environment it didn't evolve in.

http://www.state.hi.us/dlnr/dofaw/hortweeds/index.html

Yew & Me

Looking up into the Yew Tree I see the berries hanging like droplets of blood on the evergreen.  And I remember my Grandad telling me how the berries are poisonous.  His voice still comes back to me after all these years with varying kinds of advice.  In fact, most of the Yew Tree is poisonous, including the wood, bark, needles and seeds.  It was used to make arrows during the Middle Ages and even if the arrow caused but a flesh wound, the unfortunate recipient would still die of poisoning.

The birds have been consuming the berries in large amounts today.  Foraging up in the branches and down on the ground where some have dropped following a windy night.  They seem to have no problem with the poison and simply eat the berries whole.  The seed passes through them intact and the rest of the berry is digested.  I guess this is no accident, as the tree benefits from spreading its seed far and wide, and the birds benefit from a fruit that nothing else can eat.

Mice in the Attic (Part 1)

The mice in the attic have come back.  Lying in bed last night I could hear them scratching and scraping above my head, one of them was making so much noise I thought it was going to come through the ceiling.  This is not a new development.  Ever since we moved in they have been a recurring theme.  Just as your head hits the pillow they start with their night time activities.  You can win a battle but you can never win the war - let me explain.

The first time I heard them I thought a squirrel had got into the roof space, or maybe a rat, that’s how loud they were.  So I went up there to investigate, squeezing through the small entrance into the loft.  It soon became obvious it was mice because several of them wandered passed me, bold as brass, heading for the other end of the building. 

I’m not fond of this roof space which is full of a hundred years of muck, debris and dust.  There’s an old wasps nest right next to where you poke your head up when first entering the space and it looks like a carcass of some kind in the torchlight, and spider webs hang everywhere from underneath the stone slates.  You have to watch where you tread for fear of putting your foot through the ceiling, and also negotiate several internal walls.

I’ve got nothing against mice and used to look after them when I was a kid and my parents wouldn’t allow us a dog.  But you don’t want them taking over your house.  The fact is they will find their way into your kitchen and piss all over your breakfast cereals.  Mice have no bladder and are permanently urinating as they go about their daily routine.  And they breed, oh boy can they breed, reproducing every few weeks so that numbers quickly quadruple.

Despite the fact they are a nuisance, I didn’t particularly want to kill them, so my first line of attack was defence - I blocked up every obvious entrance route into the attic.  I went through with this expandable foam that sets as hard as rock and squirted it everywhere I thought the mice might be coming in.  Then I got hold of some humane traps and set them to catch the mice.

It took several days for one of the mice to go into this trap and then, according to instructions, I had to transport it at least three miles away from our house so it wouldn’t find its way back.  I let it go up on the moors where it would most likely perish anyway.  I knew this wouldn’t be the end of the problem because mice are social creatures and rarelywork alone.

Sure enough, that night, as my head hit the pillow the mice started partying again.  And this time my partner hated the noise so much she went and slept in another room, this was proving a serious issue.  I was lying there, in the cold, with no-one to hug, listening to the mice enjoying themselves.

The blocking of any obvious routes into the attic was a waste of time, this whole house is riddled with spaces between floors and walls that stretch out into the joining properties.  Mice can squeeze through the smallest of holes and it wasn’t going to be possible to block up every single one.  It was worth a try, but turned out to be completely pointless.  The overpriced humane traps were equally pointless.  In fact I think the mice, which are not as stupid as we think, were extremely suspicious of crawling into those odd looking tubes of plastic. 

None of my mouse friendly strategies had worked and the population had doubled in the time I’d taken trying to reduce their numbers by one.  I really didn’t like it, but more drastic steps were needed.  And these drastic steps involved a Mars bar, a drawing pin and the lid off a jar of honey.

Mystery Bites - Ouch!

Somewhere between here and there, between a road and a field, between a footpath through a woods and a garden with a path covered in moss I was attacked.  An ant perhaps, or a murderous mosquito?  A horse fly or a flea? Whatever it was had a right good go at me, trapped inside my shoe as it went on its way, ripping chunks from my flesh.  Now the creature is gone, but its trail of destruction is left, itching like a bastard! 

The wasteland across the way is a breeding ground for biting insects. And at this time of year they seem hungrier and more savage than any other.  They are preparing to die, in the inevitable frosts, and they are turning even more poisonous in this bitter ascent to oblivion.

The spots have formed miniature volcanoes that are oozing a lava of clear body fluid.  I have to scratch them some more even though I shouldn't, it gives me great relief but is short lived.  Ravaging my skin with my blunt nails so the area looks even worse.  Roll on the winter and let it be a cold one!

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home,

Your house is on fire and your children are gone,

All except one,

And her name is Ann,

And she hid under the baking pan.

Fluttering inside the lamp in the living room was a ladybird.  At first I thought it was a moth or a fly that had interrupted our evenings telly watching.  When I got closer I saw it had distinctive red spots on a black background, rather than the more familiar black spots on a red background.  I watched the spotted wing cover lift and the wings emerge to carry it towards the energy saving light bulb, a remarkable piece of natural engineering.

I haven’t seen much of the ladybird this year and why it had suddenly appeared at the end of October I had no idea.  Perhaps the endless rain had upset the balance as it had with many other insects, animals and plants.  I cupped the delicate creature in my hand and carried it to the front door.  Letting it go into the night time air I realised it had turned cold and this sole survivor was unlikely to last very long.

A little bit of research and I discovered that this insect may have been yet another example of an invasive species, the harlequin ladyird - also known as the halloween ladybird, which may explain its appearance at this time of the year.  But I couldn't be sure, because at around 5mm in length it could have also been the native 2-spot ladybird.  Identifying ladybirds can be a tricky business for a lay person.

The Spanish Slug

A thick trail of slime had appeared from underneath the kitchen door, stretching up the wall to the shelves.  It was the middle of the night and I’d been struggling to sleep so had come down for a drink.  Alarmed that something had got into the food store I opened the cupboard doors and peered inside.  There was movement of some kind coming from behind the tins of beans and tuna, but in the poor light I couldn’t see very much.  Cautiously I moved the tins to one side and that’s when I saw him, the biggest slug I’d ever seen in my life.  I broke out in a cold sweat.

It was about 15cm long and oozing its way through the back of the cupboard.  It had a light brown foot and bright orange skirting.  Its long optical tentacles waved slowly back and forth in the gloom as it continued on its way, taking little notice of me, as it searched for something to munch on.  It was the infamous Spanish slug recently in the news for thriving in the UK.  Not the first time I’d seen one of these creatures, but certainly the biggest one I’d come across.

I got some kitchen roll and caught hold of it so that its huge body collapsed and rolled in on itself.  Even in this defensive state it was the size of a tennis ball which I carried to the kitchen door.  It was pulsating between my fingers as I hurriedly unlocked the door and lobbed it into the back garden.  I went to the sink and scrubbed my hand free of the brown slime that had soaked through the tissue.

*****

Later that night I had this horrible feeling the super slug had re-entered the house.  This time there was trail of slime up the wall near the window, so I pulled back the curtain to see where the creature had gone.  There was a crack in the wall into which the mucus trail led and I put my fingers and hands into it, prizing it apart.  I pushed my head into the opening and in the distance I could see something shimmering so I crawled inside.  There was building debris and brick dust and then a thousand moths surrounded me with noise, calling me all the names under the sun – except there was no sun.

I pushed onwards through a mirror pool of mercury emptied from old thermometers, through the petrified celebrity trinkets that hung from the ceiling, through a valley of five legged worms that pulled me in every direction, through the bad memories until the terrible guilt was gone and then, finally, I found king slug, sat aloft a throne of solidified slime, his voice boomed out in anger.

“Why have you followed me here?”

“Because I need to know what you are,” I said, rising up from all fours.

A slow and ugly smile spread across his face.  “Don’t you realise?  I am part of you and you are part of me.  You are the perfect host, and I am the perfect parasite.  We co-exist, you and I, living off each other.”

With that I visualised the ever present exploitation and could hardly speak for the anger and frustration of it all. 

“You’ve been holding me back for years, feeding off me like a cancer that never kills, but brings the illness.”

I smashed a sharp quartz crystal from a rock and picked it up.  I let the darkness sparkle on its razor blade structure.

“Ha! You haven’t got the guts,” slithered king slug.

And with that I lunged at the monstrosity and sliced and diced its soft underbelly into a thousand pieces.  The cavern was filled with the groans of a dying scum bag and the globules of yellow green slime flew all around me like ejaculated freedoms.  And when I’d finished the onslaught I dropped back against a smooth boulder and surveyed the scene.  The barbed structures of this underworld all covered in the remains of my foul deed, until I let the moment glide away, and dreamt of falling beneath a parachute to a freedom I could never have.

Plenty more leaves on the trees

"There's naw point sweeping up them leaves lad.  More yet to fall!"

The voice came from behind me as I was filling another bin bag by the gate.  I turned round to see the old fella looking up at the trees and then back at me.  His dog was also questioning my actions with a stare.

"I know," I said. "It's just they're getting slippy."

The fact is I nearly went arse over tit earlier today as I stepped down onto the pavement.  I broke an ankle that way a few years ago and I didn't fancy hobbling around like that again.

"I'm just saying, plenty more leaves on the trees." He shrugged and continued on his way, tugging his hound to follow.  The dog looked as if it wanted rescuing, but went slowly on its way.

I looked up at the copper beech.  It was still half full of dusky leaves ready for the drop.  I didn't really mind the job, despite its futility, because it got me out the house and moving around.  My working life was one of sitting in front of a computer, or sitting in a meeting, or sitting in a car, it felt good to be outside.

"That's going to keep you busy," came another voice, and I looked up to see a neighbour from a few doors down.  She was being taken for a walk by a young dog that was straining on the lead to get going.

"Yeah, certainly will," I answered and stopped to chat, but she was gone to the pull of the young dog.

Funny how such a mundane task can bring you into contact with people you normally never see.  And also yield many comments on a job that no-one else can be arsed to do.