It may be coincidence............

Great story Gat. interesting too! Might keep that one up my sleeve for when the foxes bring their babies to rampage around our garden next spring!! Sorry you are still 'in drought' over there, crazy weathers we are all experiencing isnt it?

Unfortunately, it's been particularly bad this year weatherwise, and we don't normally expect levels of dryness like this until about the middle of August. The garden is just dust. We were expecting a few days of wet this last weekend, and the clouds rolled over, and the temperature dropped, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, but not a single drop of rain fell. The next ten days are for hot, dry sunshine, too, so it's all very depressing. You've all had our water ration over in the UK!

gosh, if its not one thing its another, poor you, the air would have been blue here too if that had happend to us, hope you get it sorted soon Gattina,

Of course you're not heartless, Gattina, but it must have been heartbreaking to see so much damage :(((
Really sorry, and I know how hard it is to manage a shrug and say "they're only plants".

How damned annoying, but understandable from the wildlifepoint of view. Am glad you left water and snacks for them and hope they stay away from what is left of your garden. Goodness, bet they thought they had found a gourmet restaurant. Jx

Oh poor you Gat, glad you found a solution!
since having all new soil in the borders all the local cats use them as a loo grrrr!!

I've not heard of it except from you, do you know what it is or does it just pong horribly?.........at least it seems to work!

Well, bearing in mind we have rather a lot of cats (about 23 - we've lost count), we have had remarkably little problem with them using the flowerbeds as loos, except when we have just turned the soil, weeded or planted something. This stuff would stop 'em in their tracks, though. It must help that "our" moggies have acres of countryside to roam in. What they do do, though, is find a beautifully warm patch of earth (usually where I've just got seedlings coming through) and roll on it all afternoon. Not smelly or dirty, but every bit as destructive. Little tinkers!

Such a shame that these creatures are doing damage to your much loved piece of England. I do hope that your solution works long term for you too.
It is just so down heartening to see all your hard work ruined over night, isn't it?
It's strange how we are all experiencing problems different to the norm this year.

Humph! Strange is a polite way of putting it!

Its so annoying to find all your hard work damaged like this and I expect this is a polite way of putting it. I hope you have now sorted it. We get really annoying flies which we think comes from the allotments in front of us which is constantly under water.Its stagnant water so doesn't smell nice sometimes either. We are on a hill, so the water doesn't come near the house. If I try this M.S , would it harm our two cats?

So sorry to hear of your troubles, Gattina. What a year for the planet - tales of woe from US as well...

Rose, it shouldn't harm anything, insects included, and I certainly wouldn't put it around the place if it were going to have a bad effect on cats, seeing how many of them we have. I did check very carefully before I ordered the stuff. It's supposed to act solely as a deterrent.

Sorry Gattina, though I am a HUGE lover of animals, Peter may be right.....cock and load.

Oh sorry to hear about the damage, but the poor animals have to survive somehow. Nice that you've put something out for them, and I'm glad you've found a way of deterring them from your garden :o)

Isn't it a problem! You want to help by putting out water etc. for suffering creatures - but how do they know the difference between a heap of stuff you don't want and a heap of stuff they have to dig for? Hope things dull down (as opposed to 'brighten up') in your part of the world. Wish I could send one of our evening storms along to you. We - and the garden - have had enough now and would like to bask in sunsets and gently lowering evening temperatures along with our vino, rather than a sudden surge of humidity, followed by cold gale-force winds bringing lightning, thunder and heavy rain on their tails!

Thanks for sharing...going to try rubbing Olbas Oil on myself before I water the garden in the evening and see if it acts as a midge deterrent!

Not sure about that, but it'll sure clear your sinuses a treat, Julie!

Is this the stuff we call Wintergreen which is in quite a lot of 'muscle rub stuff' e.g. Deep Heat etc.

I find Avon Skin So Soft dry body oil spray (the green one) works -I think it's got citronella in it.

Yes, Shirlwhirl, that's exactly it. If you want insect repellent, I, too hear that Avon S-S-S works wonders, Mel. I just buy a little bottle of oil of citronella from Superdrug and lace cheap body lotion with it and smother myself with that before I go to bed. It doesn't smell very alluring, but it works, and you can't get Avon products here.

That's a good idea, Gattina. I have loads of the Avon stuff - hand it out to friends and family - but usually forget to use it myself! Fortunately there's not a huge problem here. (I suppose if there were, though, I'd be less likely to forget...)

Thanks Gattina, I'm a bit late getting back to you. Busy in the gardens as usual!

Thanks Gattina, I shall have to try it round my garden!

Some alarming and sad news this morning. Last night we were woken at 4.30 by a tremendous banging coming from out in the roadway by the side of the house. It was a fine full moonlit night, but we couldn't see what was happening. We did see, a little later, two badgers running away, and something white and floppy staggering around in the gloom. This morning, with daylight and a lot more courage, I went to investigate, and found that the badgers had torn down a great wooden door to the poultry shed, and there were about half a dozen little gosling corpses, mangled and headless, plus a whole lot of feathers from the mother goose who had been trying to defend them. I'd rather the bu****s dug up my plants!

I think badgers are horrible creatures - I can't imagine why some people get so gooey eyed about them.
They are so destructive. Some visited our garden once while we were on holiday & we came back to find it had been dug over as if it had been done with a rotovator!!.... & what's more they had eaten every scrap of our sweetcorn which was growing a treat!! Never tried growing it before either, I was so livid.

The other side of the badger is whether or not it carries TB & infects cattle, well I think it is six of one & half a dozen of the other!!
I don't really want to start a discussion on that, but I would have no qualms about farmers shooting badgers!! I'm not so keen on the idea of gassing though, that's barbaric & smacks of wrtime horrors.

Those poor little goslings & the mother goose must have a most terrifying time, I'm so sorry to hear all that happened on your land. I hope some of them survived.

It must have been pretty terrifying for you too Gattina, not knowing what it was in the middle of the night!!! You don't really expect b-rs to be breaking down strong wooden doors do you. It just shows how strong they are!!

Hope you never get the b****rs in again.

It's one of the bits of life in the country, and we have had to harden ourselves. Nature red in tooth and claw. Plusses and minuses. The farming community are totally inured to it and don't treat their animals with much humanity, I'm afraid, and that upsets and angers us more than anything else. Darned humans.
Strangely enough, Shirley, I wasn't in the least frightened - just very intrigued and curious. Luckily I stopped short of being daft enough to take the big stick we keep by the door and going outside. OH, of course, slept through the entire episode.

Mine OH would too I can tell you!!
I wake at the slightest thing, but he sleeps through thunder storms, gales blowing everything around and any other noises off!!!!!

Mine slept through most of the last earthquake, and all of the previous one! (they were quite gentle up here)

Crumbs Gattina, lovely to live there, but I don't think I would like the earthquakes - fierce or gentle!!
I felt one that we had here once - I was sitting in an armchair watching the tele & I thought the leg had come of the chair because I rocked backwards & forwards!! Only once but most peculiar.
I didn't know what it was really till I heard on the news that there had beeen an earthquake in this area!
How often do you get them?

They aren't that common, maybe a couple of times a year, Shirley, and, very luckily, up here we have never felt much more than a bit of a tremble or a mild jolt and the furniture rattling. It's like having heavy traffic drive past on the road outside, or a cat jump onto the sideboard. No-one locally (except the poor souls who died down on the plain near Modena and the hundreds who are still homeless about 70 kilometers away) think much at all about them. The ones we had in Manchester quite a few years ago were much more worrying.