In May I wrote about the new Fruit Cage over our raised vegetable beds. This will protect early plantings from birds including six chickens that wander around every afternoon until sundown.
At least they did, until a fox came, and now we get two eggs per day not six. Thus, two families reliant on us for fresh free-range eggs, had to make other arrangements. Of course, the fox was only fulfilling its nature.
However, it is also natural for people to keep chickens and other animals, and so the predations of Reynard results in his gain and our loss.
But we, also lose the pleasure of sharing the joy of the chickens as we open their pen door and they excitedly rush out, free to dash around the garden and farm yard looking for their treats of woodlice, grubs, snails, grass, chickweed and the serendipitous moments they share whilst simply being chickens. They are alive in ‘the moment, ‘ oblivious to fear of the silent predator.
We live surrounded by people who keep livestock, who understand them and are happy to share the landscape with them. We all live in the knowledge (unknown by animals) that we, and we alone must exercise stewardship of the numbers not just of animals, but of people.
The fruit cage, made in Britain by Northern Polytunnels, is doing its job and so my raised beds are now replete with a range of vegetables and include two gooseberry bushes, all purchased this year from Roses Garden Centre who sell plants raised by the family.
Talking of raised beds, however, reminds me of our recent stay at the Oxenham Arms in South Zeal near Oakhampton. It had been a Monastery then Manor House and, in 1836 the Hotel lodgings of Charles Dickens. His room now contains a high four-poster bed in which we slept, and his study in which he had penned the greater part of ‘The Pickwick Papers,’ was our bathroom.
This is the third time in recent years that, unknowingly, we have been a part of Britain’s historical impact on the world stage. Whilst in Wells Somerset, we had the room from which open window the Quaker William Penn addressed a crowded market square, prior to his crossing the Atlantic to found Pennsylvania in 1681.
Another brush with literary history was in a room directly across the narrow street overlooking the house of Coleridge Taylor where he entertained his friend William Wordsworth in 1797. Here we were asked to occupy the dining table next to the one being used to film Comedian Frank Skinner and writer Dr Denise Mina during a TV series in which they discussed poetry. We were told by the professional film crew to “converse normally” as they could control all aspects of the sound in the wider room. Our unexpected bonus was to be briefly filmed at our own table and, whilst watching the TV programme a month or so later, I said to Marie that, “being background noise to Frank Skinner” might prove to be our moment of fame.
To conclude: My earlier mention of vegetables reminded me of the need to hoe around them. I have a Dutch hoe which does two things to weeds; it chops the stem and disturbs the roots.
Great Uncle George taught me that you will never eliminate weeds, so disturbing the roots was the best way of controlling their growth and so stop their fruition.
Just as weeds cannot flourish if you constantly disturb the roots, so too with Civilisations: and when I look at the mess Western civilisation is in now, I ask myself what and who has been disturbing the roots of our culture to the point of its collapse. They have already done severe damage to two generations of children and, as the Bible implies a third and fourth will be terminal.
I have views as do others but, until we stop them, the Malevolent Hoers who see Greco/Judaic civilisation as a weed, will continue to disturb our roots.
Our ancestors gave us a world in which we have flourished and, as the Bible also says, we should honour them rather than self-righteously building up our own self-esteem by deriding the weaknesses of those long dead.
We should honour and be grateful for the good they did us, and leave God to judge their ill deeds, as most assuredly, he is judging ours.
View from the Pew 