A fancy brood of chickens lives perilously close to our veg patch. The unspoken rule is that they are ushered up-hill to peck the grass and not down-hill to roam free through our potager. Alas up-hill has been confused with down-hill and the result is widespread anarchy. An entire salad crop has been destroyed in one afternoon of delinquent chicken behaviour. Still, I destroyed an entire egg crop in one single tortilla, so I see it as a kind of informal exchange, though Husband has declared chickens devious and full of vengeance.
Veg patch accounts to date:
Profits: 3 courgettes, handful of chard
Losses: 5 cabbages (shredded to lace by unknown beast), basil, coriander, 2 peppers, 2 strawberry plants, entire salad crop.
On critical list: all aubergine, melon* and all remaining peppers
*Incidentally, Cavaillon, our nearest town, is ‘melon capital’ of France and is thus announced by an enormous stone melon at the entrance to town. If I can’t produce a melon in the Luberon Valley, the very heart of melon country, I will hang up my trowel and take to my hammock.
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