It’s harvest time at Scarecrow Cottage. This means long days of picking and preserving, climbing up ladders with empty bowls and climbing down ladders with full ones. The weird weather this year has disrupted the normal growing patterns – our sweetcorn and peas are virtually non-existent but the beans look as if they’ll still be growing well into the autumn. And then there are the figs. Dear God, are there figs.
The 2 fig trees (Scott and Virgil) are 3rd or 4th generation descendants of a sapling that arrived in a neighbour’s suitcase after he had been to visit family in Croatia back in the 70s. Clearly they like a south facing garden in Wales more than they like the coastal karst of Dalmatia because not only do they produce a lot of fruit but they also grow into very big trees – very, very big trees. The care, cropping and distribution of fruit from the fig trees form part of Annie’s job description. In early spring she pruned Scott so radically that most people thought she’d condemned him to a slow death. There have however been two less terminal results from her extreme arboriculture: firstly Scott’s bare, stumpy branches have become a magnet for every passing pigeon in the area and secondly, Virgil – presumably desperate to avoid Scott’s fate – has overcompensated in the amount of fruit he has produced to the extent that Annie has sourced scaffolding to allow her to pick from the higher branches.
But let’s deal with the pigeons first.
Tuesday 22nd August.
7am Annie goes out to feed the livestock and as usual, in flagrant disobedience of rat ingress prevention rules, leaves the door to the house open.
7.05am Annie re-enters house and screams “Sh*tting H*ll!” scaring herself and Lily the cat (who at an advanced 16 years old is now firmly and happily living in La-La Land). The shout has no discernible effect on a pigeon who is sitting on the living room sofa as if he owns the place.
7.15am I arrive on scene. The pigeon has been named Jimmy. I’m not sure why but over the years I have learnt that accepting there are mysteries behind some of the happenings at Scarecrow Cottage is often the best path to take to inner peace. Lily has been unceremoniously ejected as she was found affectionately licking the pigeon’s face and although Jimmy was not that bothered by his close proximity to a previously feather loving predator, caution was indicated. It turns out that Jimmy is a racing pigeon so I am required to write down the ID and telephone number on his foot rings so Annie can arrange a rescue. She has experience of doing this sort of thing from a few years ago when a racing pigeon called WC flew into a tree in the garden and sustained brain damage. At the request of Juan, the Spanish owner who lived in Yorkshire, WC was taken to the local Vets’ for a neurological assessment but sadly he died just before the bill ran into four figures. Anyway, that’s another story so let’s go back to Jimmy. Jimmy was given a dish of corn for breakfast, had a selfie taken with Annie and then was put in a cage while contact was made with his owner.
11.30am Annie has left the premises to baby sit a paralysed dog while its owner takes a basket of figs to Terry Walton the gardening guru. I don’t think Mr Walton had indicated any desire for figs but losing control over life decisions is often the price of fame. I have been deputised to wait for Derek*, Jimmy’s owner who is on his way from Trefforest*. Annie has sent me a text to say that Derek’s sat nav is not working so I will need to be at the bottom of the garden waving to any passing motorist who looks lost. I have a better idea and make use of the scarecrows’ blackboard. This has its desired effect and pretty soon Derek arrives.
11.45am I have learnt a lot about racing pigeons. Derek says that the fact that Jimmy’s ring is white indicates that she is female. I ask what her name is. Derek turns Jimmy upside down and says E243168. I say my sister gave Jimmy some chicken corn. Derek is not keen on chicken corn as nourishment for racing pigeons. I comment that Jimmy seems very tame. Derek replies that her mother is also friendly and given to riding around the shed on Derek’s shoulder. Derek says that Jimmy’s father is the Blue who is calm. If Jimmy’s father had been the Pied Cock, Jimmy would have ripped my sister’s face off. I wonder where Jimmy had come from. Derek had entered her into a race which started in Epsom in Surrey on the day that Storm Betty made landfall in the South West and rattled ferociously through a great swathe of England en route to the North Sea. Many pigeons, Derek admitted sadly, had not returned home. Only this morning he’d had a message from a man in Liverpool about one of his birds who had landed in Anfield. Derek had offered to send a courier but the Scouser said he’d keep the pigeon for a couple of days and feed it up before letting it go to have another attempt at making it back to South Wales. Derek is grateful for people like Annie and the man from Liverpool but says pigeons are not doing well these days because of mobile phones. I have now got an image in my head of birds sitting outside cafes texting each other rather than racing home and I can’t unsee it.
As for Virgil and the fig glut, in addition to our freezer being full to bursting point we have been offloading fruit onto friends, family, neighbours and occasionally, random strangers (and I’m not talking about Derek, who was fig resistant). I have now developed a new business strategy called Figonomics. We don’t accept coin of the realm so this year, figs have been exchanged for scaffolding (see above), a pot of redcurrant & apple jam, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, perennial flower plants, the hedge in the front yard being cut, an aerial gymnast who fearlessly climbed the scaffolding to pick a day’s crop, a free car wash, a wicker basket and 6 ground post spikes. If only someone produced a cuddly toy it would be like a Good Life version of the conveyor belt in The Generation Game.
Wednesday 23rd August.
10am In the past two hours Annie has had 3 increasingly irate voicemail messages from a posh sounding woman who says she’s ringing from London. The last one is bordering on hysteria and goes like this: “This is LITTLE Bluebells NURSERY. We NEED you to RING us BACK NOW!!! We NEED to know if YOU still WANT the PLACE that YOU RESERVED FOR ORLA!!!! RING US BACK NOW!!! WE CAN’T KEEP WAITING FOR YOU!!!!”
“What do you think?” says Annie. “Is it spam? Oh, I know how to find out. I’ll ring her and ask if she wants some figs. If she’s really from London, she’s bound to say yes. If she’s a spamming bot, she won’t know what to say.”
“What about Orla?” I ask.
“Stuff Orla,” says Annie pressing the keypad numbers on her phone. “Getting rid of the figs is more important.”
*Names and locations have been changed to protect the innocent.