with the occasional rant about tin openers...

Saturday, May 21, 2011

First blood to the birds...

... Round one to the Goodwives of antiquity.

After all that glorious weather, followed by incessant rain, everybody’s barley on the Inishowen Riviera is sprouting like something from a fairy-tale – all except mine, that is. Some gardeners plant marigolds next to carrots, etc, or nasturtiums next to cabbage, to encourage the pests to eat the decoys, and not the actual produce. It works wonders. Plant barley in an allotment, and the birds will go crazy for it, and leave everybody else’s stuff well alone. I’m glad my barley was of some service, at least.

But that does leave me with a problem. I’ve no barley growing for the rest of the project, which is mostly to do with barley. It’s a bit too late in the season to sow more, but I might do anyway, next time I’ve a spare half hour. However, I’m now only going to have room for a half plot of barley, as the idea of the allotment is we’d get some vegetables from it too.

So it would seem that the old wives from the past have been conspiring with the birds:
Ravens in league with history’s brewers, the weather in cahoots with farmers of old. I’m not being paranoid, of course, but I’m sure I occasionally catch a whiff of Humble Pie cooling on the windowsill of “it’s not as easy as it sounds”.

I BURIED the seed… how could they know?

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