Potato fans rejoice!!

Strange as it may seem, there are people out there who have said to me, “why haven’t you told us anything about the potatoes recently?”

I had no idea of the responsibility that I had taken on when I started this blogging lark. I mentioned potatoes a couple of months ago and now I’ve got tuberophiles, or whatever you call potato lovers, demanding status reports.

The potatoes are actually doing pretty splendidly, as it happens, although their well-being hasn't been entirely threat-free. There are these rabbits, you see...

I'd better explain.

Those of you that have been paying attention have probably noticed that although our garden has sheds, lawn, ferns, greenhouses and the odd shrub and tree here and there, it doesn't have a vegetable plot.

"Where are the potatoes?", you cry.
Well they're not here, obviously

The vegetable plot is at a nearby farm, where Blight-of-my-life keeps a couple of horses. She decided to create an allotment ages ago, but only got round to preparing the corner of a paddock at the start of this year. It was pretty heavy going, as it has been grassland for years, but after stripping away the turf and some serious digging, the plot was ready for planting.

If that sounds like back-breaking hard graft, you'd be dead right... which is why I stayed well clear and left her to it.

Everything was fine, the plants were coming up nicely and then all the rabbits in the surrounding fields realized that there was this really nice patch of soil that someone had thoughtfully dug up for them, where they could make nice little burrows.

We could almost hear them.

"I say", said Hazel, "This is handy. We don't have to dig through all that wretched grass."
"Oh aye, it's brilliant", said Bigwig, shoving a potato plant out of the way.
"These spuds are a bit of a nuisance though"
"I think we should leave them alone,", said Fiver, with a worried twitch of his nose "There's something... 'funny' about this place."
"Oh give it a rest Fiver. Can't you just relax for once?", said Hazel
"Yeah.", said Bigwig. "Your Prophet-of-Doom routine's doin' my head in."

And so it went on.

Until last week, when we surrounded the entire vegetable patch with a sturdy fence covered with rabbit netting.

Hopefully now they'll sod off, back to Watership Down.