I read somewhere, that there is an old wives' tale which says if you put lilac inside the house, it brings death. Our tree this year has blossomed better than previous years, it's a ripper. The perfume smacks you in the face when you walk down the driveway. They keep their fragrance for a little while so I've got bunches and bunches of them in vases and jugs all around the house. I'm expecting a major massacre any moment now!! I love to come home to a house filled with fresh flowers. Particularly now that the garden is offering up new rose buds. That is, if you can get to them before Possum does. I've tried putting a net over my favourite rose bush, which unfortunately is also his favourite, but this hasn't been successful. I can't get the roses out of the netting when I want them and so both me and Possum are denied access. I just get frustrated with the net and end up pulling their heads off which is not very good at all. The rose heads that is, not the possums. Although if he keeps this up, it really will get personal. People I speak to tell me that at night their gardens are a hub of activity with Quolls, Pademelons (I thought that was some little yellow character from an on line game), Wallabies and Possums, and that eventually they have to fence in and cover everything. We're lucky not to live that close to bushland or forest because I'd be employing some sort of armed night watch guard if that were the case. Although we're not prone to any sort of violence here and I was alarmed to come home this week to a dead Starling on the lounge room floor. With no windows or doors open it's come down from one of our sealed up chimneys where they insist on moving in with their new families. I couldn't help noticing that it was completely untouched, all feathers intact. This seemed a bit odd given we had a cat inside at the time. Then Max appears and without so much of a blink of an eye walks over the dead bird to say hi, nice you're home and feed me now. He barely even noticed it. We know he's not the predatory kind, but golly, at least pretend you caught it. Damn those lilacs.
I'd better write and say I enjoyed this post before the lilac massacrers move in.
ReplyDeleteNow I feel better seeing as how I only have rabbits and the odd possum to deal with. Starlings in the chimney would be too much. I once visited a friend who had them nesting in the walls. We had to almost yell to make ourselves heard over the twitterings, as we sat and had our coffee.