I love my garden. As I make my pre coffee circuit each morning, it helps me mark the passage of the seasons as I see which fruits have been eaten by the birds.
First up, in spring, the cherry tree gets stripped while I’m still trying to remember where I stowed the bird netting after the previous summer. I have no idea why I bother with this thin black web of fabric as it’s completely ineffectual.
Next is the plum tree. It’s triple grafted, which means our feathered friends get several week’s worth of eating out of this one tree as the fruit on the different branches ripen in a staggered fashion. The last glimpse of the plums I get is quite tantalising, as each seems to be developing into quite different varieties. I wonder what they look or taste like when they are ripe?
In an act of foolish optimism, I planted a dwarf nectarine tree over the winter of last year. I remember tossing up between that and a grapefruit. I’d obviously forgotten about the bird problem when I made my choice, because the latter would have been a far better bet if I ever wanted to actually taste any of the fruit I grew. As it is, I was excited to see last week the remnants of some nectarines on the tree. It had flowered and fruited so discretely that I had completely missed it. Not so the little birdies, unfortunately.
Next up will be the fig trees and the peaches. The fruit is all there, small, hard, green and very unripe, but in a few weeks they too will be stripped clean. We even have some grapes this year, but I’m not taking bets on any other outcome for them either.
I wouldn’t feel so aggrieved if it was some of our struggling natives that I was helping to feed, but no, I think they are mostly common-as-muck imports such as sparrows, starlings and blackbirds.
It’s almost enough to make me consider getting a cat, except that knowing my luck it would be more interested in shredding the furniture and crapping inside than protecting my garden produce. No, the only answer for me is to wait for late summer when the feijoas will arrive. Their thick skin makes them impervious to bird attacks, or maybe they just don’t like the taste? Whatever it is, after several weeks of that, hard though it is to believe right now, I’ll have had my fill of home grown fruit, and will happily put the bird netting away for next year.