My Mistress is not happy. That’s not the little bit unhappy that someone is when they stub their toe or get stood on by a 30 kilo dog, that’s the big bit unhappy that watches hours of hard work disappearing in a pile of leftovers. Blackbird, who will remain nameless (it’s easier to hate something when you don’t know it’s name) had ransacked a large number of the seedling waiting to be potted as well as a large number of the planters where my Mistress had lovely transplanted other seedlings. According to the blackbird, it is something to do with Levington’s compost making very good bedding matter in her nest, but my Mistress is furious. I’ve never seen her chasing birds out of our garden before. They are usually encouraged to stay and make themselves at home. My Mistress says it’s a bit like inviting friends to stay and then watching them carrying your ornaments back to their car. We have now been asked to spend an hour at a time outdoors acting as doggy scarecrows or more to the point scare-blackbirds. It seems to be the only solution to the problem, although my Mistress has spent her morning trying to devise other solutions. One of which may simply involve topping each pot off with stones, but we can’t find enough small stones at the moment.
The worst off it is that my Mistress has had to go out for the day and has left me in charge. What am I supposed to do? The blackbird seems so innocent and when she explained she needed to build a nest for her young I could see her rationale. I ended up agreeing a compromise with the blackbird and asked her to only decimate every other plant pot.
Alfie Dog with a little help from Rosemary J Kind alfie@alfiedog.me.uk