The green and rolling countryside of Worcestershire, England, is home to the cider apple orchards which surround the gardens of Pear Tree Cottage. They enjoy a sunny south westerly aspect with sweeping views across to Martley Hillside, Woodbury and Abberley clock tower. The Teme Valley lies just over the hill and, not far away, is the Herefordshire border. Although our climate is temperate, our seasons are often uncertain and always a challenge to a gardener! This began in 2010 & follows the weekly ups and downs of garden work chronicling both successes and failures but, above all, demonstrates the fun enjoyed by three people who regularly garden in all weathers

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24 July 2018

Vandalism in the Garden Tool Shed

The culprit!
Given the intensity of this prolonged heatwave; for the past few nights, I've been leaving the garden tool shed windows open. Imagine unlocking the door the other morning and finding cans of creosote overturned, axes, muck forks and brooms strewn over the floor.  Add excrement and chewed up straw to the scene and now guess what was getting in!  Well naturally one assumed that the culprit was gaining access via the open windows so after a major tidy up I thought nothing more about it until I was greeted with an identical scene 2 days later!  

Last night, I left the windows open a tiny fraction.  The gap was far too small for an animal capable of creating this much chaos to climb through. This morning, I was greeted by a similar scene of devastation!  Tools, straw and general vandalism everywhere. I cleaned up everything - AGAIN and this time took out the remaining straw stuffing it into an old compost sack.  Whilst dead heading nearby, I could have sworn that the bag containing the straw moved but  immediately realised that a welcome breeze had got up and probably responsible for any movement.  The weird thing was, I still had this feeling of some creature nearby.

This evening, I decided to have one last check and shook the bag violently. The straw was very slow to come out but did eventually fall onto the grass. Rolled up in a ball and falling out with the straw was a large and very hungry hedgehog!!

Image result for The adventures of doctor prickleback geoffrey higham
Who would have thought that a hedgehog could have caused so much wanton vandalism?? Anyway, after a hearty supper of dog food he went merrily on his way no worse for his adventures - reminding me of my favourite childhood story book: The Adventures of Doctor Prickleback by Geoffrey Higham.  

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