The Greening of The Doll

I tell you. If it doesn't stop raining soon.....

OK. The rain is good for crops... after all that drought early in the year, but I swear that I am growing mould. Some of you may say I always is rather mouldy but...

I have had to start using a kind of slug poison to protect my vegetables, having tried every barrier method known to man and doll... to no avail. The pellets are supposed to be safe for other animals and birds, being slug specific, and it was doing some good protection. (Not for the slugs and snails of course.) But now with all this wet... When it do not rain it be mist. And I could cackle and poison to my heart's content... but I do live on the side of a damp, grassy, granity hill... so the supply of snails be endless. I plant a new squash plant the day before yesterday... put some pellets around it, clear away any lurking molluscs I can find. Next day the plant be eaten. So's my dahlias....

But apart from all of that... I am tired of the dark and gloom. I shall turn green with mildew to match the walls.

Catching up with the lady what grew the squash plants and who runs an organic market garden business selling vegetables and plants.... she do say it be awful year... some of her seed sowings refusing to germinate and others rotting off once they have germinated. Plants bolting during the hot dry spring (what should be "now" not "then") was a cause for grief with another grower.

What hurts the market lady most be another matter. When she started years ago the polytunnels be alive with the buzzing of bees. Now there be hardly any. The tunnels be silent.

I know I be just going on about taking up the art of poison myself.... but the UK still seems to be dragging its heels over banning neonicotinoid insecticides (already banned in France) which some scientists say causes neural damage to the bees, effecting their short term memory so they no longer know "what they came here for" and more importantly... can't find their way home to the hive. You may say..."So what?" But no bees, no crops. There's this little thing called pollination...

Like I say.... wish it would stop raining for a bit.... feeling gloomy.