Are you hungry, deer?

Pass the salad dressing...

Have you arrived home to find your house has been burgled, but all the invaders have taken is salad from the fridge?

I think I know the culprits...

Another season of allotmenteering is gently drawing to a close. True, thanks to a very cold spring it hardly feels like it got going, but the half-dozen very small, stubbornly green, tomatoes on the withering plant are evidence that we did have a growing season. Sort of.

All that’s left now is to see if eating any of the rather small apples causes our heads to implode, pick the last few alarmed-looking courgettes before the frost gets them, and look forward to trying to get up there to poke a fork in liquid mud before it all freezes completely and it’s only light for an hour just after lunch. After that, winter will come.

Still, even if the nicely mulched compost and bucket of chicken poo you could smell from Scotland didn’t provide us with a bumper crop, the years of experience, closely guarded tricks of the trade and numerous hours of hard work did mean some of our fellow plotters had fruity bits and vegetable delights that looked like they had been vigorously over-inflated.

A couple of years ago, we started the fencing-round-your-plot arms race in an attempt to keep out the deer that wander in from the woodland at the top of our little green-fingered corner of paradise. In a very British way, we felt awkward doing it (I mean, it’s just not sporting, is it?), but having everything you’ve lovingly grown nibbled down to the ground really just jolly well isn’t on.

Now our thin bit of netting and bandy-legged poles look rather paltry compared to the fortresses of steel that have proliferated around the most recently protected plots.

A crop plot ad-hoc co-op developed before that, with several adjacent patches joining forces to encircle their zone with netting, saving themselves a small fortune by not having do all the edges of each plot and making one gigantic enclosure. How we enviously gazed at this enormo-plot of beautifully organised growing perfection from out tiddly, tatty, patch.

However, despite so much defence on display, the deer clearly decided that access to the salad bar was still a necessity, and plotted against the giganti-plotholders. After a couple of trial runs, they eventually nibbled through the netting and proceeded to hoover-up everything available like a drunk uncle at a wedding buffet.

It would seem our underwhelming selection of micro-fruit and teensy-veg was just not appetising enough for our picky four-legged chums, as they left us alone. Considering that a quick nudge would probably have brought our rickety ramparts crashing down, it does appear that we have been royally dissed by deer.

Even now they’re planning their next raid, and will be bringing a tablecloth, salad spinner and some Bambi-sham.

Still, I have a soft courgette and some apples so sharp you can cut yourself on them, so who’s laughing now?

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column, in the North West Evening Mail, on the 11th of September 2015, where it was retitled as "Greens make a deer feast". Waste of a good pun, that. You can view the version used by the paper on their website here, where you'll also find a charming comment from someone called Brian, who it would appear doesn't have anything much to do on a Saturday evening (probably down to his way with words) and decided to take it out on me.

It was good that I was able to reassure him that I don't get paid for doing this, so the complete lack of any discernible talent on my behalf should at least ensure he isn't rocking backwards and forwards too much whilst lamenting the decline of journalistic standards in his local paper.

We do share something in common at least - I do wonder why I'm doing it too...

(CD A-Z: Beatles, Anthology 3.)

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