well I hope the birds enjoyed my cherries! tut!

Love that you put the cherries in the coffin Bikergran

There's a flock of starlings that come down when the little black grapes in our back garden are ripe - they are popular with the blackbirds too, who sometimes nest in the vine so must be like living in a sweet shop for them. I am too lazy to net it all and sort of hope that the birds will occasionally get some of the slugs that do for everything else in the garden.

DH said it was slugs that were decimating my strawberries until I spotted a blackbird pecking away at one before I had put the nets on them. Then one evening having come home starving hungry, we sat down to dinner and DH noticed a bird at the edge of the bed that didn't appear to be moving. We went out and found a starling so badly tangled in the netting that it took us nearly twenty minutes to painstakingly cut it free, using needlework scissors! Fortunately, it hadn't damaged anything and flew away safely. I hope it learned its lesson - dinner was cold! Oddly, if you put strawberries out on the law, the blackbirds won't eat them, though they make short work of an apple.

biker what a poignant memory for you.

Our little cherry was abundant last year but the cherries were not sweet and we let the birds have them This year we think the high winds that battered it have split the trunk further down and there were only a few cherries which the birds are enjoying. After the season DH will explore it and see if the tree needs to come down.

The pigeons have stripped my only blackcurrant bush and although I can't believe it, the gooseberries from two new young bushes. I hope they got the trots. Not on my washing though!!

It was undoubtedly the birds, biker. They are not to be trusted with cherries! Once we had a new cherry tree in the last but one garden. Did we have any chance of tasting its first crop? Not a bit of it. However, the blossom in spring was very beautiful!