Wanton Vandalism

It can be slightly disheartening when you've spent several hours (and pounds) on a project, only for it to be vandalised in the dead of night. I thought that moving to the countryside would get me away from such wanton destruction.
But fear not. One of the perpetrators has been caught on camera and summarily dispatched!

A while ago, Sue planted up a couple of dozen young fir trees for me. Every year a local nursery flogs them off for a pound each after Christmas. And that was that... or so I thought.
Next time I passed the garden centre I popped in to see if they had any more and came away with another dozen. My plan was to grow them on the east side of the chicken pen. It's not often the wind comes from this direction, but when it does you generally know about it as it bites into your skin.

Anyway, the operation was going very well until I decided to go and inspect those which Sue had planted. It took me a while to locate them, which seemed a little strange until I started finding small sticks poking out of the ground with pine needles attached. Something had taken to nibbling off the young branches! There they were, just discarded on the ground. I instantly knew the culprit - rabbits! I set about scavenging tree guards from around the garden. As a temporary measure anything would do.

Two days later, I inspected the saplings which I had planted and several of them had lower branchlets nibbled off too. I hastily erected a makeshift fence and quickly got on the internet to order a roll of treeguard mesh.

Temporary protection hastily erected.

This mesh comes on a roll.
Conifers need the open mesh.

And so last week my main tasks were interrupted as I set about protecting my young trees. It doesn't look so pretty now, but give it a few years...



Mesh guards and animal feed bags underneath to act as a mulch.

Back to the perpetrators. Here's the one I caught on camera. But there are more out there, and this is (was) just a baby.

No escape!