Summer solstice.

21st June - the longest day of the year, the shortest night of the year.

Enjoy!

Only six months to the Winter Solstice!

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Fleas have rights too!

The other day the Telegraph carried a story saying that members of the BBC's Gardeners Question Time panel were receiving threats from animal rightists.

It seems a bizarre sort of thing to happen, because experienced gardeners are usually eco-friendly and wildlife-aware sort of people - especially Bob Flowerdew (picture Mail) who many will know is a committed organic gardener.

He was the one who was thought a bit whacky when he built towers of old tyres for vegetables. He was the one who advocated using bits of carpet for clearing weeds instead of a chemical quick-fix cosh. He would never, ever use chemicals, and he always glories in the rich and varied wildlife of his Norfolk garden. But best to use Bob's own words

I moved to this plot of just under an acre twenty five years ago planning to grow every fruit, vegetable and scented plant possible, for my own and family's home consumption, and have done so to the highest Organic Standards.

As well as the multiplicity of crops I've also kept chickens, ducks, geese and bees.

So, what happened? What heinous crime did the team commit?

The GQT panel was asked a question about four-legged vermin control and answered it. They didn't condemn the questioner. These gardening experts simply explained how to control over-populations of creatures such as rats, moles and grey squirrels.

Andrew Tyler, the director of Animal Aid, didn't like what they did, and didn't like what they said. The Telegraph article lets him set the animal-rightist ball rolling in the best, emotive, up-to-date-speak, way possible. Something Mrs R will respond to from her own point of view - an extended view that doesn't relate solely to his emphasis on grey squirrels. He said,

"The whole premise of gardeners killing squirrels is hateful and bigoted. It's the worst kind of intolerance."

Notice not only the 'hate' but the addition of two recent buzzwords, frequently used by those to the left of the political spectrum to give added credence to their, "I'm right, you're wrong!" argument. It's nasty name-calling and a big case of, "I want to have my own way, and to make sure I get my own way I'll call you names!". It's nothing more than that, but it can be intimidating, and it can be seen as threatening by some.

Let's see - "Intolerance". It's a peculiar sort of word these days because it's used so often. Mrs R thinks it's more often used to refer to people with differing lifestyles, so perhaps it is the right word to use here, although it's a bit skewed. Being 'intolerant' is pushing your own agenda, and not letting other people be, do or think what they are happiest at being, doing, or thinking. Intolerance has been the basis of whole rafts of legislation to force people to be 'tolerant'. Unfortunately 'being tolerant' isn't necessarily the right thing to say about how humans relate to some animal species, and it would appear that Andrew Tyler himself lacks a not only a certain tolerance, but also demonstrates a whole heap of ignorance.

Would he condemn an arachnophobe for being 'intolerant' of spiders, or would he recommend counselling to help them overcome their debilitating fear? Or would he, maybe, recommend they go and buy one of these, or some of this? Mrs R uses one of these and a sturdy envelope!

What about the slug hiding deep inside that organic lettuce? Would it be released into the wild, put in the bin or down the plughole?

Would a parent whose child comes home from school with head lice be criticised for de-lousing, and would a pet owner whose animal has become infested with fleas, perhaps picked up from a hedgehog, a fox or even another dog or cat, be called 'intolerant' when they use a flea spray to kill these biting insects, fumigate their carpets and prevent any eggs from hatching - or would they be called wise and health conscious?

Don't fleas have rights too? Aren't they only doing what comes naturally?

Or do people such as Andrew Tyler only claim to represent the feelings and life-values of furry creatures with faces? The ones that have been increasingly anthropomorphised ever since Beatrix Potter and Kenneth Grahame wrote their children's stories.

Using his terminology, Mrs R will admit to 'tolerating' most creatures - but not rats, mice and squirrels, or fleas, not when they invade her and her family's immediate space.

None of the Rigbys has ever lived in a brand new building, so each successive "Rigby Towers" has had air gaps a-plenty. Where there are air gaps then nature, in all its' glory, will soon follow - sometimes with unpleasant and potentially health-threatening consequences. Fortunately these things tend not to happen either all at once or in quick succession, but during Mrs R's lifetime she's experienced the following :-

Mice in kitchen cupboards.
Mrs R challenges anybody who finds trails of mice faeces on crockery and around food packets to say, "Aww, cute mice!" and leave them to their games.

Anybody faced with this scenario will resort to using either poison, traps, or a cat. Not doing so will put their own, and their family's, health at risk. If humane traps are used and the mice are released nearby they'll find their way back remarkably quickly. Releasing them into a strange area means releasing them into another animal's territory where they will have no idea where to find either food or shelter from predators - something that could be almost as cruel as a gin trap.

Mice in the bedroom!
It takes a few mice less than a fortnight to destroy wardrobes full of clothes by tucking into a sleeve here, a hem or a neckline there. It takes a few mice less than a fortnight to munch and defaecate their way through drawers full of undies, socks, tee shirts and jumpers. For a family of humans to return from holiday to discover that all their clothing, bar those in their suitcases, has been destroyed by a small mammal results in instant, and dire, repercussions for the culprit(s) - either the cat, fresh home from the cattery, is released to do its' worst, or a trap is set.

Moles in the veg patch.
Molehills might look fine on a roadside verge, but when the beasties erupt a mound of soil in the middle of the carrots something needs to be done. Plant deterrents such as euphorbias don't work, nor do bottles buried in the ground. Electric deterrents work a bit, but a determined, and burgeoning population of moles can only be resolved by either permanently raising the water table so they move next door (which is impractical), by something more fatal or a thick layer of concrete.

Grey squirrels in the attic.
Yep, those too. These creatures can't tell the difference between a plastic-coated electricity-carrying cable and a twig. They like to strip the bark from twigs with the intention of eating it, and try to do the same with the plentiful supply of wires in the roof space. It is not only dangerous, but also very expensive to fix.

Rats in the garden.
Even though they say we're all at most a few yards away from a rat, because they frequently live in the sewers, we Rigbys won't tolerate them living above ground in our garden. Not with a garden pond and with pets and children sharing the space. Rats can carry Leptosporiosis, otherwise known as Weil's Disease and also Hantavirus. Because cases of infection are, apparently, rare the symptoms are not well-known and not always picked up by a GP.

Having had a family member laid low by reluctantly, and late-diagnosed, Lyme Disease we Rigbys are aware of the devastating impact of an infection by something so small. We simply won't take the risk.

There are lots of rats. Rats are increasing in numbers ever since councils were ordered to encouraged to allowed to relax the frequency of household waste collection (originally brought in by legislation to protect the public's health) and street cleaning and gully clearing became an occasional rather than regular occurrence. At the same time councils were, umm, encouraged, to rake in as much as they could charge for non-essential services, so 'pest control' (including first call-out) for non-council tenants and/or non-recipients of state benefits became chargeable, and expensive. We Rigbys and our neighbours have seen rats in the garden for the first time ever. Because there are only a few Rigbys compared to the numbers of rats we've seen, the garden of Rigby Towers and neighbouring properties are now protected by bait. You can even buy the stuff from Tesco these days - but these guys are good.

Call us selfish, if you will, but it's our family and our health. You want rats - then keep them in your own garden!

Likewise, if a squirrel ever moves into the attic of Rigby Towers it will be trapped by a licensed expert. The law says that it is legal to trap a grey squirrel, provided you have a license. The law also says it is illegal to release a trapped grey squirrel into the wild - which means that once trapped the creature must be humanely dispatched. (see DEFRA) Which moves neatly onto the next quote from Andrew Tyler.

"People should cherish them. But there is a concerted attempt to characterise them as vermin and a threat to the red."

Oh believe me Mr Tyler, we Rigbys enjoy seeing a grey squirrel jumping and running up the garden in search of peanuts and seeds. But they're not human, they aren't able to understand the law of supply and demand - they're hungry and will eat until there's nothing left. We Rigbys and our neighbours have, between us, spent a small fortune in bird feeders, so we now have a system that allows them access to one, and only one, which is wired in place onto a metal bracket. The feeder itself has steel 'ports' through which the creatures can access the contents - which they do, and amuse us human observers. They'll chew through anything else, will bite through thin wire or keep at it until it's untwisted. Feeders of almost any size or weight will be unhooked and run off with - meaning there's nothing left for the birds. Oh, and grey squirrels will eat birds eggs too. If they're hungry enough they'll chew through a nesting box to reach the contents, and gobble up the eggs of those fluffy, hard-working, Blue Tits without a second thought, which is why the lids have bitumen coverings and the openings are protected by sheet metal.

What we Rigbys do is called control, and it's also being reasonable. It's a way of rationing the resources we are able to, and can personally afford to, offer the visitors to our garden. It's a way of making sure each type of creature gets a chance.

We like grey squirrels because we've never known anything else, and as was said recently, have never seen a native red squirrel in the wild.

Perhaps if the Victorians had understood that wild animals are just that, and are not easily contained behind six foot walls, they would never have introduced the species to Britain. In a mere hundred or so years the few specimen grey squirrels brought to this country managed to breed so successfully that, as a species, the greys have out-performed the native red squirrel which is now at serious risk of extinction. There are too many to try to trap and return to their native habitat - which is North America - the only option is to cull them, to give the red squirrels a fighting chance of survival.

It would be interesting to know how animal rightists would react if, say, there were two separate species of oh, I don't know, let's say 'elephant', whose native habitats were normally separated by a huge, uncrossable-without-a-ship ocean - but due to mankind's ignorance the bigger of the two had been moved to the other's habitat 'for fun' and, because it bred more quickly and had no natural enemies in its new country, was eating the other to extinction. Would these people acknowledge that the intruder, as a species, was still doing very well in its' original home and should, as a matter of expediency, be removed from where it is an alien species? Or wouldn't he/they mind too much if the little one died out for ever? Would they mind if the species became extinct? - Because it seems that's what they want to happen to Britain's native Red Squirrel. And that, sort of, moves to the final point quoted in the Telegraph.

"Gardeners who should be nurturing life and respecting life shouldn't be taking this bigoted view."

At this point Mrs R spits out her coffee!

The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot thus:

a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others.

Mrs Rigby has, firstly, three words to say. They are, in random order as follows:-

Pot!

Kettle!

Black!

Oh, and OED also says that garden is

• noun 1 chiefly Brit. a piece of ground adjoining a house, typically cultivated to provide a lawn and flowerbeds.
2 (gardens) ornamental grounds laid out for public enjoyment.

• verb cultivate or work in a garden.

A garden is a man-made alien environment, it is not a native habitat. A garden left to its own devices will firstly end up with knee high grass, docks, dandelions, plantains, thistles and so on - the butterflies might like it, and a few mice, but not much else because, for example, the blackbirds won't be able to get at the worms they depend on. It'll then be invaded by the quickest growing local 'weeds' - brambles, nettles, bindweed etc., which will out-compete the grasses and so there won't be food for those butterflies, except for the few that lay their eggs on brambles and nettles. Eventually, if left for many, many years, it would turn into something vaguely resembling how the local landscape might have looked before the ground was turned into a garden, before it was fertilized and composted, before it was enclosed and tended - but it would include imported, alien, plants growing strongly. These plants are useless to the local wildlife because they've evolved elsewhere, nothing much eats them, nothing much lays eggs on or near them - because British wildlife doesn't know how.

It's also important to remember that away from gardens and on similarly sized areas of land these days there are generally fewer birds, fewer small mammals and fewer insects - because in the 'wild'* there are no people to provide food. Gardens are crucial to the survival of wildlife of our overcrowded little island, and they also have to be managed to ensure there are not too many predators.

Although she doesn't listen to it very often Mrs R knows that the GQT programme is, perhaps unusually these days for the BBC, not there to promote an agenda. The expert gardeners are there to answer questions, and to answer them to the best of their ability based on their knowledge and experience.

The question was asked on a show recorded at Hillsborough Castle in Ireland. Eric Robson chair[ed] the programme from Garden Show Ireland, at Hillsborough Castle, County Down. He [was] joined by Chris Beardshaw, Bunny Guinness and Bob Flowerdew.. The cumulative knowledge, and accepted expertise of these individuals is immense - and they look after the ecosystem of the whole garden, not solely for the benefit of the four-legged visitors.


h/t for story Englishman's Castle
..........
*
'wild' - a misnomer.

Every square inch of land in Britain is owned, and is managed in some way or another, either by homeowners/landowners (including landlords), local or national government, railways, highways authorities, farmers, Forestry Commission, National Park authorities, English Nature, Wildlife Trusts etc., etc.. All of Britain is 'as we/they want it to look', and depends on the current 'fashion' for land maintenance, current 'best practice' for managing both native wildlife and ecosystems.

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Plant postcodes

The Natural History Museum has a really useful site called the Plant Postcode Database.

All you need to do is put in the first part of a postcode to get a list of native plants growing in that area. They're listed in groups according to plant type. The ones they think worth growing in a garden are labelled GW = Garden Worthy.

All the plants are linked to a description, the "garden worthy" ones have pictures and growing conditions - it's a heck of a timewaster.

Try it and see. This, for example, gives a list of native plants for the Aberdeen area, which might be useful for Leg-Iron who's just started waking up his garden after a long, cold winter.

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Parsley

There are all sorts of 'old wives' or folk tales about parsley, including that it should be sown on Good Friday (when the Devil's busy). The idea has recently come back into fashion, but not for any religious significance.

We're told that seeds work with the seasons, they react to natural forces and one of the most powerful of nature's forces is the Moon. It regulates the tides and can do the most weird things to people too, but that's by the by.

Apparently if parsley seeds are sown as close to a full moon as possible they germinate more quickly - other seeds need other phases of the lunar cycle. If you read Guide to planting by the moon or Planting by the Moon Phases you'll learn far more than Mrs Rigby can tell you in one short blog post.

And if you'd like to know why Good Friday was chosen as a good day to plant parsley you'll see that it matches a full moon, because the church calendar sets the date of Easter according to the lunar calendar, as follows :

Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon (PFM).

In June 325 A.D. astronomers approximated astronomical full moon dates for the Christian church, calling them Ecclesiastical Full Moon (EFM) dates.

From 326 A.D. the PFM date has always been the EFM date after March 20 (which was the equinox date in 325 A.D.).

Yep, it's a bit wordy, but that doesn't matter too much as it's enough of an explanation.

If you don't believe sowing seeds according to the Lunar calendar works then why not try a little experiment. Sow some parsley seeds now, or tomorrow, or on Easter Sunday and sow some more in at weekly intervals until you've used up the whole packet. See which germinate first.

You might be surprised - we Rigbys were last year, but aren't sure if the same will happen this year because it's so blimmin cold and we don't trust this new-fangled lunar science thingy - at least not yet.

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Beating the green blanket

Blanketweed**, the bête noire of garden ponds - or should that be the bête verte?

Ghastly stuff, that can choke oxygenators and because it takes up so much space means there's less room for fish. Removing it manually can mean hours of trying to twiddle it round a garden cane, a bit like making candy floss, only to find it's magically glued itself to a bamboo leaf joint and refuses to let go.

But, there's something that'll deal with it - barley straw.

It works too, even if the pond doesn't have a pump. Just throw in some bags or 'logs' of the stuff and let them work their magic. It takes about four weeks for them to start working, and they should stay active for about four to six months, depending on the amount of straw used.

Apparently as the barley straw decomposes it releases chemicals or enzymes which inhibit algal growth. Robyn Rhudy has an easy, but detailed, explanation and links to a scientific paper. Both make interesting reading and should tell you everything you need to know, both are very readable, so there's no need to be worried about too much technical stuff or incomprehensible scientific jargon.

If you don't fancy the idea of seeing lumps of barley straw in amongst the plants in your, now crystal clear, pond there's a liquid alternative - barley straw extract. All the blurb about it claims it will work almost instantly, instead of having to wait a few weeks for the bacteria and bugs to get to work on the straw, because the stuff is an extract of the decomposing/fermenting straw. If you use this it'll possibly mean two or three doses throughout the growing season.

There are barley straw pads and pellets too, all are meant to work equally well. There are some that contain lavender stalks, but these should only ever be used along with a pump/filter that moves the water around, because concentrations of lavender can kill insects, even in water.

We Rigbys have only tried using little (about 8" diameter) barley straw bags we were able to get from our local pet shop. Each one cost us just over £1 and is, essentially, a loose ball of straw inside a plastic net. We did think about making our own, but as our pond only needed four we decided that getting, and storing, a whole bale of straw wasn't worth the effort - and most of it would either end up on the compost heap or be used as a playground for mice.

Last year we dropped the bags into the bottom of the pond, weighed down with a large holey stone, but it would seem that keeping them nearer the surface might be more effective - because the warmer surface water keeps the bacteria and other micro-organisms happier. We don't plan to 'experiment' as such, there's no point, we just want to keep the blanketweed away so we'll tuck some bags of straw in behind the baskets sitting on the marginal shelf and see what happens.

Decaying barley straw isn't toxic, even though the EU tried to prohibit its' use. Here's an extract of a comment from Dr. Nick Everall from here (he wrote the paper linked earlier). He does seem to know what he's talking about.

The chemical aspect of straw control is universally accepted as a lignin derived breakdown process and thus banning straw at the levels it is applied would be like banning leaves falling into watercourses in the Autumn

All sources seem to say we can't overdose the pond and kill off everything (including the new fish we've bought for the local heron) so we reckon the more bags the, err, clearer the water.

As an aside, it would be nice if Spring would arrive in Rigby Town. It's the first year we haven't had big daffodils out for March 1st, and they still aren't showing their faces - the ground is too cold, because it's too wet. Only one or two celandines so far too, even though there are crocuses, which is unusual because our celandines are usually welcoming us in through the gate in February.

**
A bit of botany.

Blanketweed is Spirogyra spp. A filamentous alga that lives in freshwater habitats and was once studied as sixth formers following the A-level Botany syllabus - an exam that probably doesn't exist any more. It's named from the spiral arrangement of the chloroplasts. It doesn't like moving water very much, but will happily choke a small, nutrient rich, pond. There are some rather good microscopy pictures on this Dutch site, which even show the wretched stuff mating.

And the paper written by Dr Nick Everall is titled "Control of Algae with Straw.". Go on, read it, you know you want to.

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Frogs

Dear Frogs,

Thank you so much for letting us know that Spring has arrived, at last.

There is just one thing we would like to point out - the best place to spawn is in the pond, not on a damp patch of lawn.

Sincerely,

Rigbys.

....

A letter to a heron.

Dear Mr Heron,

We Rigbys are aware of your place at the top of both the food chain and the avian pecking order, a position only surpassed by humans who have, in the past, captured and eaten herons. But we don't do it any more, not in Britain. We do not tend to kill and eat heron these days because some people think you look too pretty to eat, whilst there are laws that stop others - ensuring that your species does not go the way of the Dodo.

You will recall your excitement when, last year, we Rigbys filled Rigby Towers' lake with numerous fish of various sizes and of various breeds. We humans were aware that, from afar, near the top of the nearest tall tree, you carefully monitored these creatures, biding your time, waiting until the risk of landing close to humans (and cats) would be worth your while.

To the delight of the Junior Rigbys you began to landing the garden late in the evening, when you thought we humans would not notice, and began selecting the larger, more flamboyant fish, or those too brightly coloured to successfully hide in the aquatic undergrowth, for your supper. Your activity made the smaller, better camouflaged, less well-endowed fish secretive and suspicious of any visitors to their tiny kingdom but they thought they were safe provided they kept quiet, did nothing to bring themselves to your notice, and whilst there was a place to hide.

The more senior Rigbys were, at the time, smugly self-assured that they had had the foresight to plan ahead and ensure that there would always be sufficient fish both for you to eat and for humans to enjoy watching, so weren't overly concerned by your activities and tolerated your behaviour.

Nothing was done, therefore, to discourage your evening visits. Nothing was done to make it difficult for you, and your family, to sustain yourselves from what you considered to be your private larder.

Mr Heron, we know this winter has been a difficult one for you and yours. All ponds, and the edges of watercourses, in and around Rigby Town have been covered with ice for days on end – making it impossible for you to easily satisfy your huge carnivorous appetite, so we know you have had to search far and wide for your supper. We Rigbys have been concerned to notice that, even now, as our human calendar enters the second week of March, and ever since it stopped raining, Rigby Lake has been covered with a film of ice until early afternoon.

This made us ponder, for a while, on the confirmed science of global warming, and how we have not yet, for the first time in ten or more years, discovered tapioca-like clumps of frogspawn nor have we seen a celandine flower. But those are separate issues, and we must not allow ourselves to be sidetracked, or use this smokescreen to obscure the important issue of the day which is your family's dietary habits and perceived lack of foresight and apparent failure to plan ahead.

Winter is a time for plants to sleep, floating leaves die back in the autumn ensuring all available sunlight reaches the plant life slumbering in the depths of ponds. Unfortunately the loss of these leaves enables patient predators like you, Mr Heron, to see things that would be otherwise concealed.

During the latter part of last week, Mr Heron, you or your spouse landed in the garden of Rigby Towers, strolled into the icily cold waters of Rigby Lake where you stood, patiently waiting, until the very last murky-green fish panicked and sacrificed itself to become your supper. Clever Heron! If you were human you might have patted yourself on your back for your skill at spearing a tasty morsel, but, as a human you might have also considered the plight of the previously mentioned Dodo.

The trouble is, Mr Heron, that you have now managed to land yourself not only the last fish, but also a bit of a problem for both yourself and the Rigbys.

You see, humans don't make fish. We don't lay their eggs ourselves – grown-up fish do that. The laws of probability tell us that Rigby Lake needs at least three adult fish to be sure that one will be capable of laying her eggs, eggs that will eventually hatch and grow into fish large enough to become your supper.

Now you have eaten the last fish and, no matter how many times you visit Rigby Lake to inspect its' contents, there will be nothing  fishily edible again until we Rigbys have managed to put something in it.

Do you see a problem yet, Mr Heron? A problem that might be rather more alarming than you could possibly imagine.

Mr Heron, we Rigbys are now the only things that can replenish your fish larder, and we are entirely dependent on other humans. We are dependent on those who have both the enthusiasm and the premises from which we can buy replacement fish – affordable small fish that will grow to become your supper later in the season.

Some humans would refer to such other humans as a 'Water Garden Specialist', others would know them as a Fish Shop (the sort that sells them live, unbattered, without chips) or a Pet Shop. Rigby Town has neither of the latter two, so we Rigbys depend on the former - which is a grand name for a business that sells a few goldfish, some expensive carp, a few plants to put in ponds or 'water features' as well as bags of pretty gravel and a few pressed concrete ornaments that have travelled all the way from China.

The owners of the 'Water Gardens' nearest to Rigby Towers appear to be rich because they have a rather nice car, and because their whole place takes up a lot of space. It takes up much more space than the local Tesco Metro, but their tiny shop is little more than a large storage shed and carport. It has a leaky roof, which doesn't bother the fish. It doesn't bother the customers either, because nobody tends to go there when it's cold or raining – unlike those who shop at Tesco.

Herons eat a lot in the summer, and get fatter, so that during the leaner times of winter they do not die of starvation – their bodies use the fat instead of eating fresh meat. You do that, Mr Heron, without thinking. Humans, unfortunately, have to plan ahead and need money to go and buy what they need from places like Tesco, or Asda, or Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Lidl or Aldi for their food.

Mr Heron, you will never have heard of an “economic downturn”, a “recession” or even a financial “depression”. You will never have heard of “wages”, “national insurance”, “business rates”, taxation”, “cost of living” or “inflation” either - there is no reason why you should,. You have no need for money. You spot something you what you want to eat and you take it, although occasionally you might have to fight other herons to get your own way. This means you have no need of Tesco, Lidl or the Corner Shop, and will not have heard what happened to Woolworth, to MFI, to Zavvi, to Borders Books and other businesses that are no longer 'in business' because they ran out of money.

They ran out of money, Mr Heron, because although they thought they had planned ahead for lean times, they hadn't done it well enough and the lean times lasted longer than they had anticipated – perhaps because they weren't given the right information.

Because herons don't live as long as humans you, Mr Heron, will not know that it's been many years since there has been as cold a winter as the one that's coming to an end. The Met Office predicted the 2009 to 2010 winter would be mild – their prediction was wrong. It was so wrong that they have decided to give up long-term forecasts because, they say, even though they've been making weather forecasts since 1854, it's suddenly become too difficult.

Their wrong prediction, Mr Heron, hurt a lot more people than the salt-free road-gritters, and snow clearers, it also hurt people who thought they would be back up in business before the beginning of a warm and sunny March.

That wrong prediction has hurt people who thought they had put enough money aside not only look after themselves and their families during the lean, cold, winter months, but also had to pay the government for the privilege of being a trader, for the privilege of having a fancy-looking car, and who have had to pay for the diesel and electricity needed to keep the creatures in their care alive and healthy. And all these things have got much more expensive recently and that, Mr Heron, is why we Rigbys might not be able to replenish your larder - because Rigby Town's Water Gardens has not re-opened after the winter, and the run-down premises are up for sale.

Your plight, Mr Heron, can only be resolved by Rigby Town's Water Gardens getting a new, careful, owner who is willing to make sacrifices, perhaps do without a posh car, whilst spending their small income on making the shop look a bit nicer, so it will attract more customers than before, but those customers also need to have money to spare for the business to survive.

Your plight, Mr Heron, can only be resolved by Rigby Town's Water Gardens getting a new, careful, owner who is willing to make sacrifices, perhaps do without a posh car, whilst spending their small income on making the shop look a bit nicer, to attract potential customers. Until then, Mr Heron you will have to go without and unfortunately we Rigbys cannot be held responsible for your lack of planning, your lack of foresight, when it comes to feeding the baby herons that will, assuredly, arrive in the not too distant future.

You wouldn't understand, Mr Heron, how your current situation and the wider picture relating to your food supply mirrors that of a much large place where the fortunes of the all but the very few depend entirely on the appointment of a new, careful, owner whose advisors need the gift of accurate prediction, foresight and long-term planning.

Sincerely,

Rigbys.

....

A box for a Tawny.

About Tawny Owls.

Mentioned today because it's interesting, and will take ages to read through the whole site, and because it's easier to bookmark in on here than in amongst the hundreds of personal bookmarks on the browser.

Mr Rigby might end up making one of these, but he doesn't know it yet.

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High Fructose Corn Syrup, bees and humans.

.
Mrs Rigby always liked the idea of having bees in her garden, because she and all the other Rigbys eat quite a lot of honey. Like so many good ideas, nothing ever came of it, but it doesn't mean she isn't interested in what happens to honey bees.

Bee-keeping seems to be beset with problems these days, with whole colonies being wiped out by the nasty little varroa mite, but there were other things going wrong.

Some clever scientists in America think they might have worked out another reason for bees dying - it's the food they're being given by their well-meaning keepers.

Mrs R spotted an article in a newspaper and promptly lost the link, so spent a couple of minutes searching the net to find it again. She's managed to tracked down the source, which is the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. This is what it says

... high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has become a sucrose replacement for honey bees and has widespread use as a sweetener in many processed foods and beverages for human consumption. It is utilized by commercial beekeepers as a food for honey bees for several reasons: to promote brood production, after bees have been moved for commercial pollination, and when field-gathered nectar sources are scarce. Hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) is a heat-formed contaminant and is the most noted toxin to honey bees. ....

There's more of the article, but unfortunately Mrs R isn't a special enough person to be able to read it, so she looked somewhere else and found this

The scientists measured levels of HMF in HFCS products from different manufacturers over a period of 35 days at different temperatures. As temperatures rose, levels of HMF increased steadily. Levels jumped dramatically at about 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yes, that's all fine and dandy, they've found something that kills bees. It's a solvable problem because they can be given something else to eat. Sounds like good news to bee-keepers and good news for honey-eaters too, because it might mean that British honey is safe after all.

There's a extra bit

Because HFCS is incorporated as a sweetener in many processed foods, the data from this study are important for human health as well,” the report states. It adds that studies have linked HMF to DNA damage in humans. In addition, HMF breaks down in the body to other substances potentially more harmful than HMF

So we're eating this stuff too? And it can alter DNA?

Where are the banner headlines telling us all about the health risks? There were some only a few days ago telling us that ham sandwiches might give us cancer, but zilch, zero, nothing at all about this - so mebbe it isn't really dangerous at all, unless you're a bee.

Mebbe, though, if you eat some hot High Fructose Corn Syrup and then give a DNA sample ...?

Nah! Silly idea!
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