It is important to encourage our small human offspring to have an active interest and enjoyment in the cycle of life by stuffing beans and peas into the damp soil and watering them and themselves, the family dog and you at the same time. It is just as expedient to discourage them from removing the plants from the ground next day to see how much they have sprouted.
In fact, have you ever noticed that children and chooks in the garden have similar and disastrous consequences? The enthusiasm for "helping" in the veggie patch or flowerbed, the patio plant containers and ripe fruit trees can be unbridled and inevitably one is faced with a need for distraction tactics.
Our neighbours recently appeased my longing for a scattering of chooks to give a homely look to the cottage. Their lovely auburn feathered point-of-lay girls have taken to legging it through our hedgerow the moment they are let out in the morning and spending the entire day assisting me chattily in the garden. It is a fatal attraction. They have become my garden shadows.
I love them to bits and they are delightful company but we don't seem to be reading from the same page. While I rake and tidy my edges they scrabble and scrape furiously beside me to find bugs. While I plant out seasonal salad and winter veg crops, they follow and studiously remove the seedlings. While I primp and tidy the plants in containers, they take it as an open invitation to strip the begonias and chomp through large quantities of succulent jade plant.
As I sweep the decks, they rush up and squit across the clean area as only happily well fed poultry do. In desperation I throw out a handful of stale cat biscuits and at which they run or fly or scoff. So now they arrive, oblivious to the two fat cats sitting on the deck, barging and cackling past them to knock on the glass ranch slider for the daily hand out. And they are so hawk-eared! Any attempt to duck out the front door in an effort to elude them is foiled by their quick dash from the rear of the property and should the door be left open they happily help themselves to the brimming cat dishes in the utility room.
