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Self-Sufficiency in Style

june 2004 diary

This small area of England always swarms with Americans each summer, not real tourists, but ex-servicemen coming back to relive their youth-time flying during WW2, or breaking the Berlin Blockade.

This year was special with many coming back for the first time in 60 years. Every few miles there are old airstrips, RAF or USAAF, the latter in this immediate area, each with its memorial now - and more rarely a wooden cross in a hedge between, a marker for a crew that did not quite make it.

They have always been welcome visitors about here wandering about the little towns, trying to recall the pub or perhaps the never-forgotten romance with a local girl.

That was the beginning of the month, but by the end we have a very unwelcome American tourist, or rather resident.

There is quite a story behind this cross.

My US military readers, of which there are improbably quite a number, have been having a bad time recently; they might find this of some inspiration.

“Lest We Forget”

Strange that we should choose quiet places, even for a holiday.

The cow happens to be dry, so there is no milking until the Autumn and our Daughter-in-Law volunteered to take charge

...of one baby, two rottweilers, two pigs, one cow, five sheep, one cat, umpteen chickens and the walled garden.

It gave us our first holiday for six years.

Actually, the animals are not too much trouble, but the watering of two tunnels and two greenhouses is quite a chore.

Anyway, off we went to Ireland, of which there will be more elsewhere.

...except for the pests.

True, we have not had caterpillars this year, and the magpies have not returned to steal the hens' eggs, but everything else has been busy.

The sweet corn has been eaten, by rabbits we suspect. That is what comes of planting outside the walled garden. They say that rabbits came to England with the Romans. We are overrun with them.

Would that they have taken them home with them!

There should be sweet corn (maize) on the left.

Plastic defences. Why didn't I think of that?

Daughter-in Law had a bright idea...plastic bags, moved regularly.

It worked.

But the netting keeps them away off the most precious targets, most of the time.

Strawberries, red, white and black currants, blueberries: all protected.

The season progresses and more crops become available.

Err, yes I know you can't see it. They hide. Bottom left.

There are varieties that can be grown outside in the UK, but they are later and rather smaller.

The grey imported American variety are, by common agreement, hooligans. We used to get a shilling a tail for shooting them.

As the writer took a break from this page, he found an apricot has been stripped of fruit - in the last hour.

"Yankie Doodle Dandy" was not actually audible from the ash tree, but it was the usual suspect.

Mrs P favours a rat trap.

Murder in mind

  at Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.