Sharing

A near perfect day at The Farm. Only ice cream, a visit from David Essex or the news that Mr and Mrs George were providing an on-site masseur for employees would have improved it.

The weather was perfect, not too hot to work without getting an attack of the vapours, but warm enough to strip off a couple of layers and soak up the healing rays.  The gardens were looking great, though I say it myself.  Actually I didn’t say it myself, one of the visitors approached me and told me so.  The rabbits seem to have lost their appetite for newly planted treasures, with evidence of only minimal snacking.  Moods were buoyant.  There may have been whistling.  Not by me, as it is very unladylike.*

Then I spotted the worm in the apple.

Those of you who aren’t on their third pint of sangria (there must be a few surely?!), will have noticed that it was actually a caterpillar.  Perched atop Leucanthemum ‘Crazy Daisy’.  Munching. Instantly I was transported a couple of years** into the past, to my days at the correctional institution, where I could hear my biology teacher describing caterpillars as “eating machines”. Not an ideal guest for the herbaceous border.

This little fellow was a stunner, Kawasaki green and plump as a sausage.   But gorgeous as he was he couldn’t stay there.  I don’t mind sharing, but please not the Shasta Daisy.  Nor was he squished.  He was relocated to the meadow where hopefully he would find Michaelmas Daisies to quench his appetite.  Or perhaps in turn he fed a hungry blackbird.  He did look quite delicious.

* I can’t whistle.  I really, really want to be able to whistle.  Especially to wolf-whistle.  Many have tried to teach me.  They lie by the side of the road in a crumpled heap.

** Ant years