Not artichokes.
I spent all of last autumn dreaming of artichokes.
In the three years since my last bumper crop, which grew splendidly with no attention at all while we were half a world away, I have tried and failed to get more magnificent edible thistles towering over my veggie patch.
Our garden is a challenging environment for any seedling. I suspect the sad fate of the last two generations of artichokes can be attributed to the deep gloom that descends on the yard around the time of the autumn equinox. But there are other possible suspects in the frame…
Yes, rabbits. My transition to the Mr McGregor, the homicidal carrot fancier in Peter Rabbit is now complete. But so far I’ve avoided GBH with a shovel. Instead I got me a fine flock of bird cages.
A budgie lover in Berowra must have had a mass break-out just before the last heavy rubbish day and I was the lucky beneficiary.
But my visions of bounty weren’t to be. I’m not sure if some small but dextrous herbivore lifted up the tiny food hatch and sneaked in for a unappetising meal of baby thistles or if the artichokes lost the will to live in dank captivity. On the upside, budgie cages are evidently great at keeping rabbits off your rocket.
Not strawberries
So, there are no artichokes in my bird cages. And so far, there’s no strawberries either.
My other score from the last council cleanup was a load of aviary wire and some nice hardwood architraves. A few bucks on hinges and I was able to put into place the final stage of my termite-assisted plan to reduce my erstwhile (and totally pointless) garden path into rotten timber. My aim: to grow strawberries under the flight path of the gate-that-used-to-be-a-bed. Or more precisely, to grow strawberries for human rather than chicken consumption.
I was pretty happy the outcome of my chookhouse-tolerances joints, held together with an assortment of mixed screws from the jar at the back of the cupboard.
Thus far the chooks haven’t managed to break in but the strawberries seem somewhat oppressed by their location. Every day is a bad hair day. I’m hoping they’ll be ugly but productive but the signs don’t look good so far.
On the bright side, lazily throwing scratch mix over the gate has produce a little protected patch of green in the razed earth of the chook yard. I’m not sure the strawberries enjoy the competition from wheatgrass, but the hens have a hippie feast every time I do the weeding.
Fewer chickens than there oughta be.
Sadly, on one bleak and rain drenched evening in the middle of winter, most of our hens weren’t in the birdcage either. Only Cyan, bottom of the pecking order thanks to her gammy eye, and Treasure, broody as usual, were in Colditz, the predator proof cage, when a hungry fox came to visit.
Only one of the chooks that had been perched in the favoured roost, the potted fig tree, survived, a fairly run-of-the-mill Barnevelder whose name we could never quite remember. After the slaughter, we renamed her Xena as a mark of her prowess in battle. Bold and beautiful Cleo, curmudgeonly Snowball, at least 8 years old, feisty Morgan, shy but reliable Abby and inexpertly named Tigress all disappeared or were found in bits in the yard the next morning by the shellshocked RB.   Given the sad end of Shyla under similar circumstances at the same season the year before, you can only conclude we are poor chicken keepers and, frankly, very slow learners.
So now, come rain or shine, you’ll find our remaining hens locked up every night. At the moment, it’s a lonely night for Xena, locked up in Palm Beach. Her mum, Treasure, laid low by has some mysterious ailment, has been in the intensive care ward in the laundry, while one-reviled Cyan has now attained the pre-eminent position of queen of Colditz, adoptive mother to three new day-old chicks.
Fortunately, Xena can always rely on her playdates. Just like next doors’ kids, the neighbours’ hens nip through gap in the fence and hang around outside waiting for our girls to be let out for the day. They share a feed and if we’re lucky lay an egg or two on our side of the “magic portal” (to clarify: we get eggs from the chooks but sadly not the kids).
Three cheers for the return of stay-at-home scrumping! Low-level food thievery without even leaving your own backyard.
And no baby brushturkeys
Until they’re 12 weeks old, the chicks are confined to Colditz along with their adoptive mum, in case they get eaten by a kookaburra or pecked to death by one of their loving aunties. None of them are taking imprisonment well.
Smuggling the chicks (sexed and vaccinated and genetically disparate) under relentlessly broody Cyan at the crack of dawn was a doddle. Especially compared the sleepless night I spent as a ignorant featherless human trying to keep the wee things safe and warm in a cardboard box under a desk lamp without setting the house on fire.
They were happy at first. But these days, the chicks and their mum spend most of their time pacing the length of the cage, apparently hoping to find a hidden exit. Their only distraction is the thrill of scratching through the bug, straw and leaf litter mixture left in the potato patch after this year’s laughably miniscule harvest of spuds.
They’re particularly plaintive when they have visitors.
I’m not sure if all that frantic peeping is concern that one of their number has apparently gone astray from the flock, or jealousy that the baby brush turkey is free to roam the yard at will.
The little brush turkey spends a surprising amount of time close by, staring intently into the cage. Perhaps there’s something more to it than the chick crumble dropping through the wire floor. One night, tiptoeing down to shut in Xena for the night, I saw him roosting there, right on top of the cage. Strange behaviour from a chick that never meets its siblings or its mother, let alone snuggling together with them at night.
