I'm being tested......

Readers of this blog will know how committed I am to wildlife gardening.

But you will know that this year has been the sorest test yet of my compassionate, wildlife gardening credentials. My non-violent credo is being sorely tried! Our allotment has become such a shrine to unmolested wildlife that it is beginning to resemble a potential new place of Jain or Hindhu worship.

At ground level we have a rat in the compost heap. It does great work aerating and circulating the compost. But I wish it would go.

We are host to rabbits who have been eating anything green that is unprotected. I know they are hungry and that for a long while the cold late spring left them nothing to eat - but I find it hard to sympathise.

Underground we have a mole or more accurately now moles (plural) that are engineering a complex system of tunnels beneath our overwintering onions. Now the presence of moles could be seen as affirming for the no-dig gardener committed to encouraging the worms in the soil. I can't see it that way at the moment.

Then there is the fox who buried a packet of biscuits where I wanted to sow phacelia. Why doesn't it chase the rabbits or sort the moles? It seems that foxes have become prey to the same decadent excesses as have our human population. Instead of doing wholesome things like catching vermin, they are content with filched biscuits.

And from above, great fat wood pigeons swoop down to attack anything that looks sweet and green.

And it goes on .... This week I opened the shed door and found the photographed nascent wasp nest. Now wasps are the gardeners' friend eating aphids and thus protecting our crops. But a wasp nest on the inside of the shed door? Imagine how pleased the wasps would be each time we needed to get into the shed for tools! This time it had gone too far and I reluctantly removed the nest.

Pragmatism or a slippery slope? Oh well, another sleepless night ahead I guess.