With a quack quack here and a quack quack there
on Aug 18 in Ducks, Gardening by DanI made a conscious decision this year not to bother with the garden. What with training and fundraising for the walk I figured the last thing I needed was putting pressure on myself to maintain a bunch of cabbages too.
So I just fed and watered the chickens, collected the eggs, and pretty much ignored the jungle rapidly springing up around me. This is the tidiest section of it. Forgive the quality of the photo but it was taken in low light on my crappy phone camera:
Of course the fact my petrol strimmer gave up the ghost didn’t really help. There are large sections of my garden which are too undulating and wild to be tackled with a mere lawnmower. And once the nettles and the brambles realised I was not going to be hacking at them every couple of weeks they lost no time in reclaiming vast swathes in the name of mother nature.
I did plant some veg though, namely a couple of pumpkin plants which I knew would be both vigorous and prickly enough to dissuade the weeds and the eager beaks of the chickens. I also planted a load of strawberries in tyres in the front yard. This has worked really well and I intend extending my collection next year with all the triffid like runners that are sprouting the moment.
Also unbenown to me I had unwittingly planted some potatoes. Or rather the potatoes I had missed when i harvested them last year had planted themselves. Considering they were an unplanned crop and you aren’t actually supposed to plant spuds in the same place two years running I didn’t get too bad a haul.
So now that the walk is over and done with I can get back on with tending old McHughes farm. I spent a very enjoyable afternoon over the weekend hacking away at the undergrowth with my brand new petrol strimmer (ooo shiny!). And then I spent a slightly less enjoyable couple of hours wrestling with bindweed and nettles in my shrubberies. Things now look a fair bit better than they did.
Not that they will ever look actually good I hasten to add. We have a large garden, but it’s an awkward one. I carved it out over the space of four or five years from a bramble clogged hillside using only a petrol strimmer, a spade, a ton of cheap agricultural grade wood, and a complete lack of planning or forethought. It will never look anything other than “rustic”. And that’s on a good day.
Still, I’m rather proud of it. I can look at it and hand on heart say “I built that”.
But the most exciting thing going on in the garden is that I’m currently bidding for this on ebay:
To the ill informed this may look like a old bath, but you and I know better. It is a duckpond!
Yes, I’m getting Ducks! And it’s all thanks to the wonderful John Grey who is exceptionally generously incubating me some of his Indian runner duck eggs. Soon I will have three of these little beauties joining the chickens in destroying the garden
I am exceptionally excited.
Quack quack.
Related posts:
- Burn Baby Burn
- Chicken Wire
- Tree watch, week four
- And then I shall capture the Golden Stag of Artemis
- Tree watch, week two.
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Oh wow I have duck envy :-)
It’s a very common problem apparently
I’ve always fancied a pet duck or two but we have lots of foxes round here and I’d fear for their safety, plus I don’t think Mapp and Lucia (our special needs rescue cats) would be very impressed either.
I think the cats would cope, none of th cats round here bother the chickens but urban foxcs are a little too brave to risk having ducks wandering around during the day time I imagine. Our foxes are cowardly country ones fortunately. There is always a risk though :/
I think most cats would cope, but I’m afraid Mapp and Lucia aren’t most cats, we’re not entirely sure what happened to them before they came to live with us but whatever it was traumatised them very much and I fear ducks might send them over the edge.
I’m so glad you’re helping to free another bath from the shackles of domestic living. Baths weren’t designed to be cooped up in the (second) smallest room; they were made to run free and wild!
http://www.bath-in-a-field.co.uk/
As you know, I am a keen supporter of washbasin rights
Are you Quackers? Ducks do distroy the garden, but oh the eggs- I too have duck envy
My garden is pretty much destroyed allready
Ducks are ace. Much better than stoopid chickens. They don’t wake you up at 5 o’clock in the morning because they’ve just laid an egg. Quacking is actually quite soothing… unlike all that squawking!
I like a good cluck personally, although Quacks are also good. I’m very much looking forward to their arrival
Prickly pumpkins?
Either you’ve got some weird hybrid thing happening in UK or you’ve been gipped out of the lovely tame pumpkin vines we collect as pets here in Oz :P
the pumpkins themselves aren’t prickly, but the vines and leaves are. Or at least mine are. Surely it can’t be just me?
Triffids! I remember watching that as a kid. I wonder if they ever put it on DVD?
Read the original book man! You won’t regret it.
The BBC did a remake of Day of the Triffids at around christmas I think, I only caught bits of it, but it looked pretty good
I’m inviting myself over for duck eggs and soldiers ;)
You are more than welcome :)
Duck eggs…haven’t had one of those in ages. Now I want to look for a store in Groningen which sells them! The eggs, not the ducks. I don’t have space for ducks, there’s a pond with plenty of those 5 minutes away..
If there’s a pond with some on nearby could you do a midnight raid?
why yes I could, that should save me buying.
I may have told you but we stayed at my bro-in-law’s house back in April and his last words to us as he gave us the keys were “feed the ducks will you”.
His three ducks have a pink sunken corner bath filled with mud and his garden is just mud now because the ducks peck it all day long, they do look funny though.
And of course, they are wild ducks, mallards, I tried to tell him but he insists they are domesticated – he domesticated them himself by clipped their wings, still, the eggs are nice.
If he’s gettign eggs from them they may well be domesticated mallards you know, I imagine wild ones only lay them when they actually need them.
Ducks! Aside from entertainment and garden destruction, will they lay eggs for eating as well?