All the flying rats of the neighbourhood have been stripping my fig tree. I haven\u2019t managed to eat a single one. My gardener had some sort of socialist Beatrix Potter idea that there would be enough fruit for birds and people when the tree got bigger. I\u2019m not sure how she figured that was going to work? Will the wax eyes say to themselves, well this fig is beautifully ripe today, but yesterday we ate three figs between us, so lets just leave this one for Kirsty, shall we? I suspect not.\u00a0I tried bird netting last year, but I was nervous that birds would get stuck in it and die. My sister puts bird netting on her fig trees, and when the little birdies perish, she feeds them to her cats as a crunchy little treat. \u00a0I couldn\u2019t do that. I haven\u2019t got any cats, for starters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All the flying rats of the neighbourhood have been stripping my fig tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8Ukf-17K","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11480,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/01\/harmony\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":0},"title":"Harmony","author":"Interloper11","date":"March 1, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"A gardener once told me that one day the birds and I would be able to share the fruit on our fig tree. I dismissed this at the time as feel-good hippy greeny bullshit, but strangely enough, it seems that maybe she was right in the end. After years of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_1569-1024x768.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_1569-1024x768.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/IMG_1569-1024x768.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":11238,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/22\/green-prescription\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":1},"title":"Green prescription","author":"Interloper11","date":"December 22, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2019m still trying to remember where I\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/IMG_0420-300x218.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4545,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/04\/10\/keeping-up-appearances\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":2},"title":"Keeping up appearances","author":"Interloper11","date":"April 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Said a brief hello to the next door neighbours as I was wrestling with the bird netting on my fig tree earlier. They were out gardening together in a vision of perfect domestic harmony. The husband looked rather abashed*, though, when he asked if I would mind terribly much not\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/4C0BF62B-A3C0-4FE5-BF37-578926CA784B-e1586650388362-225x300.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5952,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/18\/foiled-again\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":3},"title":"Foiled again","author":"Interloper11","date":"December 18, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Outwitted by birds once again I\u2019ve only eaten two cherries off this tree in the five years it\u2019s been fruiting. The birds just laugh at the bird netting, RIP. \u00a0","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/D60E425A-1C44-4435-93E1-15401CAFF7D6-1024x768.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/D60E425A-1C44-4435-93E1-15401CAFF7D6-1024x768.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/D60E425A-1C44-4435-93E1-15401CAFF7D6-1024x768.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":12360,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/25\/garden-update-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":4},"title":"Garden update","author":"Interloper11","date":"October 25, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"You may remember the mystery plant that was somewhat traumatically liberated from my compost bin a few months ago. The drastic emergency surgery performed by my husband was a complete success, and it\u2019s been thriving in its pot in the sunroom. However, it became clear that it needed to find\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/IMG_4028-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12422,"url":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/23\/weekend-update\/","url_meta":{"origin":4324,"position":5},"title":"Weekend update","author":"Interloper11","date":"November 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Nothing much has happened this weekend but I haven\u2019t posted anything for a week so I\u2019ll fill you in anyway. It\u2019s been a long weekend for me up at the beach house since I\u2019ve got today (Monday) off. I arrived on Thursday night and on Friday morning did an endoscopy\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4199-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4199-768x1024.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/accordingtokirsty.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/IMG_4199-768x1024.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accordingtokirsty.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}