I don’t have an especially large veg patch.
But currently I do have a glut of green sprouting broccoli. Loverly!
Nothing wrong with that.
Pick ’em, cook ’em, eat ’em is great for the most part. The flavour of really fresh veg is so very different from the tired specimens in any supermarket; and its home grown organic veg at that (she adds – piously)
And as for having a glut of fresh grown veg? No problem. After all - we do have the technology (a newly purchased chest freezer) specially bought for the expected excess.
No. My problem is not with the quality or quantity of the garden’s bounty.
It’s more with the zoology.
Firstly - the cat problem.
Getting anything to exceed 2 inches in height with 3 cats digging around is not easy. My barricades of canes and nets and birch twigs is a testament to cat-proofing ingenuity.
Getting anything grown under the onslaught of the pigeons is like wise a matter of sticks and string and old cds set to flutter and clatter and deter these feathered vermin. (In this sphere the cats actually come into their own – or at least young Oberon does - he being the relentless hunter).
So what else is there?
The large toad population, as well as our local hedge-pigs, are waging a sterling anti-mollusc campaign.
No. My current problem is harder to spot with my bumper broccoli bonanza.
We pick the florets, we (carefully) wash the florets, we cook the florets, we eat the florets…
We find two beautifully sautéed green caterpillars in the bottom of the cooking pan…
And I can’t get the image out of my mind!
If there were two small green corpses at the bottom of the pan… how many stayed in the broccoli… that went onto the plates… that… aaaaargh!
Camouflage is a wonderful thing… in moderation.
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