Ever wondered what your pets do when you're out?

It happens so often. As you pull the front door to, there is a moment when you wonder just what goes on when you’re not there. What do the furry members of the household get up to.

I admit it: I have actually waved goodbye to our three cats on occasion by telling the oldest of the trio, Boudicca, not to let the younger ones have a party and wreck the place.

And I’m sure that I’m not unique – though I’m also prepared to bet that at least some of it can be blamed on Animal Magic – the children’s TV programme that ran from the 1960s to the ’80s, which saw Johnny Morris voicing assorted animals and birds.

Indeed, The Other Half and I have, on more than one occasion, ‘voiced’ animals and birds we’re watching at the time (we do a great routine for seagulls).

As such, The Secret Life of Pets was always going to be our list of films to see.

We’ve known about it since last July, when, on our return to cinema viewing after 16 years away, a trailer preceded Minions, last summer’s release from Illumination. The chance to catch a preview was too good to miss.

As a bonus, Illumination’s latest release is preceded by Mower Minion, a new, four-minute short featuring the banana-loving yellow creators of chaos.

The plot of our main feature is straightforward enough: in a bustling New York, the life of Max – a little terrier – is disrupted, when his owner brings home a new dog, the huge, shaggy Duke.

When they don’t get on, that leads to the pair getting lost in the streets of the city, without their collars – chased by wardens as strays, before being rescued by Flushed Pets, a revolutionary group of formerly domesticated animals led by Snowball, a tiny, cute but psychotic bunny.

But when they are revealed to Snowball and his crew as “leash lovers,” the situation looks desperate.

Can they escape? Can they get home? Can they get on? Will their friends be able to help?

With obvious similarities to Toy Story, this is a feel-good, family film.

At 90 minutes it speeds along at a merry pace, with new characters introduced throughout.

There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and more than a few references for adults to knowingly spot.

This may not be complex stuff, but it is a real pleasure – and is quite gorgeous to look at.

And the makers have also spent time genuinely watching animals to know how they move and react in certain situations – there will be much that you’ll recognise.

So, if you want something to make you laugh uproariously and forget the state of the world today, The Secret Life of Pets is a great option.

Oh – and the makers even manage to get a Minions reference into the film too.

It opens properly this Friday across the UK.

When blackbirds fight back

'Err, I don't know how to get down.'

It’s all well and good watching vultures tear a distinctly deceased rabbit apart when there’s the safety of a nice, substantial wire fence between you and them, and being able to observe that the old cliché about nature being red in tooth and claw is true.

But such bloodiness is hardly limited to zoos. And here, in little old Hackney, there’s been a fair bit of it in recent days.

The periphery of the carpark has been, for the last week or so, an avian maternity ward.

Never before have there been so many bird families nursing young and watching over them as they fledge – it’s almost like the flats themselves: more obvious results of human fecundity than ever before.

But for cats, the presence of all these birds is like having Christmas, Easter, summer holidays and birthdays all arrive at once.

Back around 2006, when Boudi was about two and a half, and Mack and Trickie were still alive, we were all out in the garden one day, under a rather pallid sky.

The garden in those days was less patio and more just mess, overgrown with various short-lived and halfhearted efforts at anything resembling the horticultural arts.

The older cats were slumbering when, all of a sudden, Boudi jumped up at the rose bush and just as rapidly, dived in the direction of the flat, with something clearly in her mouth.

The Other Half grabbed her by the scruff and made her drop a small bird, then hoiked her inside and shut the door on her juvenile objections.

As the bird made to totter into a bush, Trickie came out of her reverie and realised that prey was around.

She was duly tossed inside too, to be rapidly followed by Mack, who, at around 14, had been the last to spot what was going on, and had started to slink toward the feathered abductee with a glint in his eye.

The Other Half, being rather more used to this sort of thing, said it was probably on its last legs and I’d need to put it out of its misery.

Great.

I got a spade, but it had no desire for a quick end, and instead kept hopping away in a manner that suggested that it was far from in agreement with his diagnosis.

After a few minutes, I decided to leave it – not least since I was, by then, being divebombed by a very angry robin.

Once inside, with the cats all complaining, the same robin took up a position atop the rotary drier and continued to ‘bark’ out a warning for the next hours.

In the meantime, other adult robins swooped in to help coax the fledgling first onto a chair, then onto the little table and from there into the thick pyracantha right next to it.

And then, until nightfall, they flew back and forth taking it food.

In the morning, they’d all gone, so presumably, the fledgling had regained its strength back and learned how to fly instead of simply falling conveniently within jaw range of a cat.

It was an extraordinary example of a family working to save their little one.

And that was the last time that we had any sort of bird incident.

Before that, there’d just been one occasion when Mack and his sister Mabel had ‘found’ a small bird and brought it into the flat, causing the feather to fly rather more than metaphorically.

That had been my first encounter with such an event and I had been all rather desperate and girly about it.

A certain more realistic steeliness had set in by the time we rescued the robin fledgling.

And that was that on the bird front – until last weekend.

Then, while we all sitting in the Sunday afternoon sun, as though summer had landed all of a sudden, Loki bombed in through the open gate and straight into the flat.

I got inside to find her in the hall with a small bird on the floor in front of her.

Boudi had materialised from somewhere and was reaching out a careful paw to see if it still moved.

We shooed them away and carefully picked it up and took it back outside.

It was breathing heavily but with no obvious signs of external injury. So The Other Half placed it in bushes and we hauled the pride inside, to the predictable objections.

It was only then that I realised that the noise of birds, which has been quite loud of late anyway, had been particularly frantic at that stage.

We checked later and the bird was gone. So, we allowed ourselves to think, another happy ending.

Unfortunately, just 24 hours later, it was Otto’s turn to race into the garden and behind a large pot. We went to see what she was up to and she shot into the flat, to be scragged quickly by The Other Half, who made her drop her prize.

It’s impossible to know for certain that it was the same bird, but it did look so – a sparrow fledgling. And this time it was most certainly deceased.

There were drops of blood on the paving stones – hardly surprising, given that Otto’s canines are so long that I half suspect she’s actually a Dracula cat.

We disposed safely of the bird and kept them in for the rest of the day, while the noise outside continued.

Since then, though, the weather and my illness meant that, until this weekend, the girls haven’t been outside.

Not that all this is remotely as one-sided as you might imagine.

Mr and Mrs Blackbird were, only a year since, squawking away in juvenile joy from the lithe silver birches in the carpark, and are now quite clearly a family unit.

No baby has been spotted, but Mr B has been seen rooting worms from the potager – and hectoring any cat (or human) who comes ‘too close’. Like some of our more colourful ’ackney residents, he was giving it large to all and sundry.

And in the week’s most extraordinary moment, he chased off Reggie, who had only reggiecide on his feline mind, dive-bombing the big ginger cat until he fled through the carpark gates.

So this weekend, whenever they’ve been out, we’ve been extra attentive, listening for any sound of avian anger.

Mind, Loki is clearly working to convince me that nominative determinism really exists.

It’s only just over a week since she managed to get up onto the balcony of the flat above ours – my back was briefly turned so I can only speculate on how she did it.

Once up there, the sense of accomplishment was soon replaced by another feeling.

“Loki, come down!”

“I don’t know how to!”

“Well … how did you get up there in the first place?”

“I can’t remember! I’m stuck!”

She paced rather frantically from one side of the small balcony to the other, meeping in an increasingly paniced way, before suddenly deciding that she could simply jump straight down, landing perfectly lightly, and then making her way into the flat as though nothing untoward had happened.

Yesterday, I found her on top of the canopy that stands next to one of the rear communal entrances, trying to see if she could see any birds in a tree next to it.

But hopefully, a rather quieter weekend is the sign that the fledglings have all fledged or perished in the attempt.

Before I sign off, Boudi wishes me, in the interests of balance, to point out that, a year or so after the robin affair, she actually caught three mice in the flat, over the course of a week or so, and left each one dead, but still in one piece, on the doormat so that, when we got home, we would be sure to find them.

The feline hunting instinct isn’t always a negative thing to be tempered as much as possible.

A purple patch

The return to London and everyday life was softened – not inconsiderably – by the improving weather. Or perhaps more accurately, by what a week of improved weather had done to the garden.

Bright red tulips were in flower, along with gloriously rich purple ones, a purple chive-like flower whose name I cannot recall, purple cape daisies and a mass of cornflower blue anenomes.

It's a veritable purple patch.

The mint, which I had moved away from the most direct sunlight, is looking better than it ever has, and the sorrel has begun producing its first new leaves, bright, fresh green with a red vein, while the curly parsley is looking healthier than ever.

Within a few days, the first nasturtiums, which I’d sown just before I went away, were popping their heads above ground.

The vine had been planted, like much else, just a year ago in March (in a heatwave, for goodness sake), but had entered winter looking brittle and dried and dead.

However, last year provided learning exercises in the extraordinary power of plants to revive, and so it has now produced a reminder, with the vine now having some 14 buds, with the ones nearest the top starting to open as the sun makes regular appearances.

The pyracantha has produced delicate new leaves and the first signs of its tiny flowers, while the rose, so sternly pruned back once again, is almost unimaginably suddenly a mass of glossy green, and the oh-so-delicate pink petals of the first clematis buds are just beginning to open.

In the grow house, the two remaining pea plants from the earlier 'boiling' debacle have come on in leaps and bounds and have spent the last week being hardened off. A third one, which I sowed just before my trip, has sprouted, along with three runner beans. And three broad beans are on just visible in their pots.

The rest of the grow house story is a mixed one.

Runner beans.

I may well have to give up on growing tomatoes, strawberries and chillies from seed this year – the erratic weather has done my embryonic knowledge no favours.

But out at the potager, the turnips and the most recent sowing of carrots have finally germinated, while peas that had taken six weeks to even pop their heads above ground are now making steady progress, and two broad beans had emerged too.

And under a canopy of gorgeous pink blossom, the blackcurrant bush is in lush leaf and busy producing buds.

So the weekend demanded that I get outside and do some gardening.

First was weeding – I mention this again simply because it’s worth reiterating that you can do it without pain and without chemicals. One Dutch hoe, the potager and around 15 minutes. All done – no backache. Two weeks of sudden spring growth sorted.

But this subject means it's also worth mentioning what happened yesterday, when the EU acted to ban neonicotinoid pesticides.

A massive step forward, but also one with dangers, given that manufacturers will look to create alternatives – and users may restart using older products that are hardly less 'green'.

Another point worth noting is that the UK government voted against any such ban – its prime constituency remains big business, and big business is not happy at this.

A comment I saw on a forum yesterday observed that, at some point, scientists may be able to create all our food without pollination. But I wonder: why would you want to? Why would that ever be a good thing?

Anyway, I remain a chemical-free gardener – and trust me, I'm not the most energetic. So if I can do it ...

You get the gist, I hope.

The next most urgent task was to sow out the oldest two pea plants from the grow house into the potager and add further copper rings to protect them.

I’d already erected the basic wigwam for the peas and put a bottom row of string around it. By yesterday, the largest of the transplanted peas had wound its first tendrils around the string.

The thing with the copper, as I understand it at present, is that you have to ensure they’re firmly in the ground – I’ve pressed soil against them both on the inside and out – so that nothing can get underneath, and that no plant flops over or debris provides a bridge across it.

Boudi thinks about chasing Basil.

But like so many things, if you check regularly, it’s a matter of moments. And in the battle against slugs and snails, it’s the best basic tactic – so I’m told.

Much remains to be done – and some new planning is in order as I work out what to do with the dead and dying bulbs, and what I actually want to plant on the patio for this summer.

The lemon tree needs some bedding plants around it quickly, to give some protection to the bare soil that loses moisture so rapidly.

It’s recovering now from the long months under a fleece, but given it’s position right against a wall, it probably didn’t get enough moisture during that time – something that I hadn’t fully appreciated and that needs to be remembered for next winter.

Beyond the garden – and the carpark – trees seem to springing suddenly to life; green is everywhere, and people are flooding out of their workplaces during the day to sit outside. The relief is obvious and widespread.

The cats are all pleased too – Boudi is managing almost daily patio rolls on the warmed concrete every time that I let them out.

She's also enjoying being able to see of Basil and Reggie – the carpark's two 'visitor' moggies – and, in general, behaving not remotely like a cat who is on the cusp of 'senior' status.

Otto and Loki are also revelling in being able to re-explore the spots they discovered last year.

So here’s hoping that we get enough of both a (late) spring and a summer to build us all back up after such a dismal start to the year. We all really need it – cats and plants included.

Christmas is for cats

Loki (top) and Otto, with shiny paper and a few balls.

‘Christmas is really for the children,’ or so many people claim.

In which case, do cats count too?

It’s certainly been an eventful festive season for our little pride, starting when Loki got herself lost.

She’d successfully chased the considerably larger Reggie out of the carpark behind our flat, and was rather obviously feeling chuffed with herself.

But by the time I’d returned from the shops, The Other Half was back inside, the door was still open, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Cue much calling and rattling of food tins. No sign.

After about half an hour of hunting – and increasing panic – The Other Half went upstairs on a communal staircase and opened a window to peer out from above.

Next door to our small block is an old pub that’s been converted into flats. He thought he spotted her on the metal stairs leading to the upper floors.

He sped out one way and I went the other, food tin and fork in hand.

There she was, underneath the metal stairs, hiding in a corner, bravado gone, now just thoroughly frightened.

Eventually he coaxed her out and through the gate, picking her up and pushing her back into the carpark, where she ran past me as I beat a tattoo on the tin and called her.

Past me, indeed, into the garden, straight into the flat and absolutely straight to the food bowl, where she started to gobble food.

“She’s going to bring that all back up,” I mused to The Other Half a few minutes later, as she continued to empty the bowl. But remarkably, she didn’t. Presumably, being frightened and lost gets the appetite going.

She’d also managed to get mud all over her paws and belly, so we toweled as much off as possible. I was wondering if we’d have to experience the joys of bathing a cat, but fortunately she completed the job excellently all by herself.

And then it was a case of flopping next to The Other Half on the sofa and not moving for the rest of the day. And the day after that.

But Christmas Day brought with it reasons to be active again.

The cats have had a few balls to play with for some time – light, ping pong balls are perfect. But they lose them rapidly beneath the furniture and then demand we get them out again.

Solution? A Christmas present of a bag of 150 orange ping pong balls.

Which we emptied onto the wooden floor all at once, to enormous feline confusion. Confusion, however, that was followed by gleeful play.

Boudicca isn’t entirely convinced, but The Kittens – who arrived at Christmas three years ago, so aren’t really kittens any more – love them.

It’s a sort of combination of dribbling skills and pinball. Although Otto has added a format to the game that’s entirely of her own making.

Having worked out that she can carry a ball around, she picks one up (using her front paws to lift it to her mouth) and then carries it to the mat inside the door to the garden.

Then she puts it down and waits until it either rolls away, before she charges after it, or until she decides to bat it away, and then charge after it.

But then, after a while of pinging it around, it will be brought back to the mat to start again. In the last week or so, the mat has changed to a piece of shiny wrapping paper, which is near the mat.

Wrapping paper is obviously another seasonal pleasure, to be dived on (this year’s new wooden floor means you can pretty much surf on it), torn at – and made into little tents to hide in.

Not that this is Otto’s only version of a formalised game.

Having realised, last Christmas, that she particularly loves ribbon, I bought a spool so we can cut lengths off for play.

And the ribbons ended up on the bed, which has a blanket box at the end of it.

The game, as it has evolved, means that when I’m sitting in bed with a book, Otto will sit on the blanket box and wait.

I’m supposed to take the longest piece of red ribbon and flick it towards her and then draw it slowly up the bed.

Sometimes she pounces quickly – sometimes she waits. And waits.

But she always returns to the blanket box to start the next round.

Cats have habits – they’ll patrol exactly the same area in exactly the same way, for instance – but neither The Other Half nor I have ever seen anything quite like this. It’s fascinating.

Mind, she will also sit and watch television (or a computer) for longer than any cat I’ve known either.

Boudi continues to be the household’s big clumsy girl. Presumably because she was so young when we got her (six and a half weeks) and because she moved into a household with two elderly cats, her social skills are not what they might be.

She gets her verbal signals all confused, growling and hissing when she’s actually playing. It still bemuses The Kittens, although they generally seem to regard her behaviour in a sort of ‘oh, it’s just Boudi’ way. They’d probably shrug if they could.

Mind, that’s when they’re not teasing her – karma, Boudi, given how you baited Trickie when you were a tiny thing?

Trickie, our Battersea rescue cat, who had spent most of her life with an elderly man who clearly liked a very hot home; who thought that she wasn’t a cat, but a small, elderly and rather genteel lady in a fur coat.

Trickie, who was nearly about to set records for the longest stay at the home; who beat her ‘cabin’ door when she saw us coming, drooled over the top of it at us, and faked the cat test, which is supposed to reveal whether a cat can get along with other cats.

Trickie, who was so grateful to be rescued from Stalag Luft Battersea, and who was then twice attacked in our garden by some hulking stranger cat, who was chased off by Boudi, paws a-whir as she hurtled after it, claws glistening in the morning light.

All of them leave you with stories and memories.

Not that our anthropological observations this last couple of weeks have been limited to the cats.

When we finally managed to get out for a walk yesterday, we discovered that squirrels make nests. Okay, I knew that they nested in hollow bits of trees, but had never realised that they actually make nests in the branches too.

We were in the park and there were squirrels everywhere – including the fattest one either of us have ever seen; sitting beneath a tree and munching its way through a whole pile of nuts, beady eye keeping a watch on anyone who got too close.

But not far away, there were squirrels running up and down the naked trees, carrying leaves to a big nest.

Since there was another rather large squirrel watching, we surmised that there’s a spot of Sciuridae pregnancy in the air.

And with a scattering of pink blossom on a tree further on, and crocuses already well on the way in our own little garden, it would seem that the seasons are well and truly in chaos.

No wonder it hasn’t felt much like Christmas anywhere but completely hidden away from the outside world.

The event that just keeps on giving. And giving

Boudi feels the Iams Olympic effect.

I am in grave danger of being worn down by the Olympics before they even start.

On my bus this morning, there was even a moment when an on-board tannoy played a recorded message by our favourite mop top, Bo Jo, telling us something or other about there being an event on and people being in town because of it.

To be honest, it wasn’t actually easy to hear it properly. I did, however, manage to control my instinct to scream out: ‘shut the **** up you great Tory twok!’ but it was a close-run thing.

Such messages are also playing on train stations and the Tube. It’s like a cross between Big Brother and the Carry On films – a particularly surreal sense of government announcements to tell you the bleedin’ obvious.

Is there really anyone in London who does not, by now, know that the Games are here and, with them, more people, together with traffic restrictions?

It’s hardly been unreported.

And then there are the new swathes of advertising all over the place.

There are banners around with the Olympic logo on. Okay: for street furniture, they’re fine – although I'm sure that nice Eric Pickles had declared war on such things.

Then there are the BT phone boxes that now have Olympic-related ads on them.

And the latest tranch of ones to appear in the centre of London are just utterly crass.

They are hung in pairs on lampposts, and many are straightforward adverts. Some, however, show pictures of assorted members of the GB squads.

And they have nice sponsorship endorsements on them – mostly, it seems, from Proctor & Gamble, the US company that owns a number of well-known brands.

TV ads have been telling us for weeks that Olympic swimming champions need to wash their hair with Head & Shoulders before a race.

Now in the guise of ‘proudly supporting’ the athletes, they have liberally dished out loads of brands to different sportsmen and women.

Thus heptathlete Jessica Ennis’s picture on one of these ‘supporting’ banners has Olay below it.

For one swimmer, it’s Max Factor – because a girl does need her lippy in the pool. A Braun shaver for a synchronised swimmer – and Pampers nappies and Fairy for Paula Radcliffe because – well, presumably because she a mum and not because of that little episode at the 2005 London Marathon.

If you wanted to show support for the athletes, couldn’t you just do it without turning it into an utterly tacky advert?

Not that this sort of Olympic bonus is just for the athletes.

You can also have Olympically clean dishes, thanks to the P&G’s dishwasher products. Although given that the Olympics are Greek, shouldn’t we dispense with the dishwashers – and smash our plates instead?

And I was tad concerned to realise that Iams, the cat biscuit (I had no idea that this was a P&G product) now comes complete with Olympic branding too.

What will the impact be on The Girls? Will Boudi take Queen B grouching to new heights? Will Loki be even faster through the trellis into Tom’s garden next door? Will Otto actually turn around and tell me that the steak at the weekend was infinitely better than any biscuit and she wants more of that straight away please?

Yesterday, the sport itself began with the start of the women’s football.

Which was a relief, to be honest – even if the stadium for the GB side’s opener was hardly full, and then there was the cock-up later with the wrong Korean flag: oops.

Perhaps that will stop everything else feeling so utterly intrusive, if not downright offensive. Although given that the council has now decided that the park directly behind the flats that I live in is now hosting a big screen for the entire affair, plus sports ‘taster’ sessions, the former seems unlikely.

On a grey salad day

The rain, having stayed away for most of the day, chose the very moment I stepped down form the bus and turned for home, to announce its return.

By the time I’d changed, the cats were sitting at the door to the patio and complaining at my slowness.

The girls are great believers in the merits of empirical evidence. I can stand there all I like, telling them that it’s wet under paw, and they will not believe me until they get to experience it for themselves.

So, briefly, I opened the door. Boudi hopped out and hopped almost straight back in.

Otto had a sniff around before concluding that I hadn’t been telling porkies, while even nominally determined Loki didn’t bother to attempt to dive into next door before running back into the flat.

But I had to go out, because the evening had been slated for the first salad from the garden.


So I donned a cap (keeps the rain off my specs), accepted that I was going to get a bit damp and headed outside.

Rolling back netting, I snipped the biggest leaves of lamb’s lettuce into a bowl, followed by some American land cress, a few young nasturtium leaves and then some sorrel.

There didn’t seem to be very much, but in he case of both lamb’s lettuce and cress, anything more would have been silly.

I also very gently dug up the most developed radish, but since there was no radish there, I carefully popped it back into the soil and returned the netting over that planter.

It might not have been much, but it was good. Rinsed and spun, it was later served with the simplest dressing, of just a little olive oil, whisked to an emulsion with a few drops of cider vinegar and salt.

It was an accompaniment to tiny new potatoes, scraped (even though that took time) and then simply boiled for 20 minutes, dotted with butter and good salt.

The centrepiece was an omelette – two extra large eggs each, whisked at the last moment and then cooked in butter that is foaming and just (but only just!) beginning to turn a nutty brown.

The Other Half’s was done first – he prefers it a tad less ‘wet’ than I do. Mine takes little more than a minute before folding out onto the plate.

And my ability to make omelettes (and pancakes) has increased massively since I invested in a really good, French omelette pan – copper-bottomed and heavy, it really does make a difference.

The other thing that really made a difference for me was reading Elizabeth David on the omelette question. Now admittedly I don't use two full eggs plus an extra yolk, but my basic method remains the one that she repeats.

We’d spent years buying cheap eggs. In the end, you don’t use them much – and certainly not as the centrepiece to a meal.

But – like the bacon I mentioned last week – if you can get quality, then it becomes worth making a meal of just such simple produce. And indeed, the moment you make eggs the heart of a dinner, then it's not expensive, even when you get the best eggs you can.

However, while everything was good – this really was a day for feeling rather chuffed that I could put together at least a small salad with fresh ingredients straight from a (rainy!) garden.

The household wages war

The clock hand was on the downward sweep after marking the hour. It was finally dark after another long June day.

Quietly, we opened the door and headed out onto the patio. The security light flicked on, suddenly alert.

There, on the basil, were two snails. On the thyme, another. On the lupins, several. On the wire cat planter, several more.

At least a dozen made the arced trip over the fence to smash in the carpark, where they provide a protein boost for the local birds.

The previous night, The Other Half had found something like the same number – and they had taken the same route to oblivion.

A few have been found drowned in beer in the snail inns, as the entire household has become embroiled in the fight against the gastropod terrorists.

Boudicca flicked one off the catnip a week or so ago, furious that it was desecrating her drugs. Then Otto managed to curl herself up on the entire plant pot to protect the rather bedraggled plants.

Loki, in a manner befitting her role as the household’s ditzy tabby, has continued to look a bit vague and left the rest of us to wage the war.

When I arrived back from Bournemouth almost a week ago, it was with some tripidation. A neighbour had happily agreed to ensure that everything was watered – although that was, in part, rendered fairly pointless as several days had apparently seen relentless rain bouncing off any surface if hit.

Out of interest, does anyone know if the drought in the south east has been formally declared at an end yet?

But back to the tribulations of an urban gardener.

The strawberries had produced enough ripened fruit that, on Saturday, we were able to have a bowl each as dessert. No cream, no ice cream – not even any pepper or Balsamico. When the fruit is so, so good, you need nothing else with it.

The broad beans had produced flowers, which are now opening to reveal pristine white petals with a delicate, black pattern.

The runner has had a fit of Jack and the Beanstalk-like aspiration and has curled tendrils most of the way up my bamboo erection.

The borlotti has reached out to grab a piece of horizontal string.

Both the latter two had the lowest leaves revealing some snail damage, but nothing too drastic. Two of the pea plants had been eaten to nothing, while the other three are making slow progress.

A snail was stuck to the inside of one of the pots I’d buried in the bed.

At the weekend, The Other Half visited our local ironmonger and bought back a role of 3mm gauge wire, from which we then cut six pieces.

They were carefully curved and then went, three each, into the planters with the radishes, and the lamb’s lettuce and baby salad leaves in, forming a framework for pieces of enviromesh, which provides excellent protection from pests, while also leaving plants able to get water and air. Everything already looks much happier.


And after reading something that suggested that snails and slugs hate slithering over used coffee grounds, we have dutifully saved several days' worth, drained and dried them, and then spooned them into the basil and lupin pots.


More will follow.

Away from the snail problem, the nasturtiums that I planted alongside the vine are providing huge amounts of joyous colour – and we’ve replanted two pots worth, which I’d grown from seed, into a basket that now hangs from the wall, giving a bit more variety of height, as well as promising yet more colour when these flower.

The vine itself has now grown enough that we can start training it onto the trellis, after The Other Half had cleared that of the dried remains of the Russian Vine.

Remarkably, we may have grapes this year. Homegrown grapes – it’s an extraordinary idea.

New catnip has now been planted. I’ve taken one of the plastic cloches that I was using to protect it from the other local cats, cut two panels in the sides and then stuck pieces of the enviromesh to it.

It provides far better protection than before, but with far better ventilation and less of an obvious way for snails to get in than the ventilation holes at the top, which can now be closed.

It’s not perfect – the sticking tape doesn’t attach to the mesh particularly well – but it is another step forward in the challenge of finding solutions for garden problems.

And quite clearly, defeating the mollusc pest requires a mixed approach – with after-dark hunting as a particularly productive approach.

The local birds must be loving this.

Won't somebody think of the felines?

Easter – like many another festival in the UK – is frequently described these days as being ‘really just for the children’.

Which is quite intriguing given that torture, betrayal and death by crucifixion feature rather highly in the Christian Easter story.

Or if you have a more folksy, pagan-stylee idea of what this spring festival is about, then those will probably be rather more sensual ideas, and pretty much an invitation to behave like one of those rampant bunnies that populate popular Easter imagery.

Now obviously the Christian religion has had a large impact on the traditions and culture of the UK – and the rest of Europe. It would be plain daft to suggest otherwise.

But I do start wanting to growl a tad when people pretend that somehow it’s the only part of our history and heritage that has had any real impact and has any relevance today.

For starters, such people seem to have a remarkably poor comprehension of just when the country was declared Christian – and even an idea that it happened within some very brief period of time.

It didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t happen in such a way that it acts as some sort of definitive end to primitive life and start of civilisation. And there was no such primitive ‘before’ – any more than there was an instantly ‘civilised’ after that can only be put down to a specific religion.

In many cases, it was a situation of the aristocracy converting – and then Christianity living alongside other religions for a number of years.

Some of what I have skated over in recent posts on the roots and traditions of Easter illustrates this: the pagan traditions being either borrowed by the church to encourage conversion or simply continued by the ordinary people – and in particular, those in rural communities.

And indeed, at perhaps the most simplistic level, one could say that everyone in the UK use days of the week that still carry names derived from non-Christian gods – which is far more than regularly attend Christian church services.

Don't get me wrong – believe what you want to believe, and I\ll defend your right to do so. Just don't try to make me believe the same thing – or try to have your beliefs foisted on me.

But setting all that aside, even if all such interpretations of Easter fail to give adults something to enjoy at Easter – won’t somebody think of the cats?

This was a very good weekend for our trio. It started on Thursday, when both The Other Half and I won raffle prizes at work. His was an Easter egg from Cadbury, with (at least) one of those sickly sweet crème eggs in it.

Mine was a plastic ‘suitcase’ of eight plastic eggs, made to look like chicks, with little plastic bags of strawberry jellybeans in each.

I don’t do jelly beans. But the plastic egg-chicks are proving hugely popular with The Kittens – and particularly Loki.

She spent much of yesterday evening batting one around the flat; occasionally having to inform one of us that it had got stuck in a corner or under some furniture and that an Easter egg hunt was not what she was after.

I never had envisaged a career as a toy retriever for cats.

But we were most fascinated when, somehow, she managed to pick it up in her mouth and carry it around: when she put it down, she made a specific noise that we’ve only heard before from Boudi, when she’s carrying her favourite toy around.

It seems as though there is a specific sound – a word – for use when carrying things.

Not that that was the only festive fun on the feline front.

The weekend’s gardening saw the arrival from Columbia Road of three small pots of catnip – or ‘drugs’, as cats know it.

It’s remarkable stuff – providing an upper when snorted and a downer when eaten.

Apparently. And for cats, that is.

Many years ago, when we still had ‘flower beds’, we brought some from the market to plant. Getting back home, we plonked our big market bags down, only for Mack to hurl himself straight into the bags holding the catnip plants.

Amazingly, they revived. And he didn’t do it every day, but intermittently, he’d throw himself into them and sniff and rub away, sending himself into a totally bonkers, zoned-out state.

Neither Boudi nor the kittens had seen catnip in its natural state, only having enjoyed it previously in its dried state, in toys. But it didn’t take long before they were all snuffling around the garden table onto which I’d emptied my bags.

Snuffling from below – and then jumping up for a closer inspection, followed by taking it in turns to pretend to be guarding the plants (that's Boudi in the picture above).

In Otto’s case, this meant taking surreptitious opportunities to rub her face against the leaves when she thought my back was turned.

Although it has to be said that the irritating thing was getting home this evening to find that Other Cats had been in the garden and pretty much wrecked the catnip, with two of the little plants now pulled up – doubtless in a frenzy of druggy delight. I have to rethink this. I have ideas, but I can't do anything until the weekend.

And much as I have little inclination to hurt Basil, Reggie or The UnNamed Mystery Cat, I also have no intention of providing their drugs for them. It's drugs for my girls or for no cats.

But setting that aside – you see? It really isn’t just a festival for children.