GARDENS: It's time to wage war on pests in the garden, and you'll need to be cunning, writes Jane Powers.
I banged awake at 5.15 this morning, woken by a terrible angst. It wasn't worry about my finances, my health or my family that sounded the early alarm clock in my brain. No, it was the snails. And the newly-emerged infestation of horse chestnut scale. And the predations of poultry. And the pigeon problem.
By 5.30 a.m. further sleep was out of the question, because the world out there was batting its way through the last tattered cobwebs of drowsiness. Not to mention that any extra bits of rest would have been denied anyway by the "dawn chorus": the hollering of the birds who were laying their daily claim to my trees. The very same trees that just a couple of days ago had caused me to go up to one of them and say "What's that?", followed swiftly by an "Oh no!" and "Yuck".
It was covered in strange little scabs, each one floating on a bed of white fluff, like a miniature alien spacecraft landing in a cloud of foam. I had never seen these before - but knew immediately what they were. I had looked them up a couple of years ago, following a friend's horrified and fascinated description of them on her best Japanese maple.
Yes, I too now had my very own colony of horse chestnut scale. These sap-sucking insects first appeared simultaneously in the 1960s in London and France, presumably having come from some warmer climate. They thrive in urban environments, where the reflected heat from paving and walls produces a balmy just-like-home climate. They produce eggs once a year, (by virgin reproduction, entirely unassisted by males) which they shelter under their bodies, wrapped in a protective, white, waxy wool.
They're called horse chestnut scale in honour of the tree on which they were first observed. But apparently they're more fond of lime (Tilia), and are also quite keen on acer, cornus, bay, elm, magnolia and various other ornamentals (including my katsura, or Cercidiphyllum japonicum). Each scale insect lays up to 3,000 eggs, which is why I was very eager to remove every last broody mammy from my territory.
After the eggs have hatched in midsummer, say the experts, you can spray the undersides of the leaves on affected trees with malathion, if you're pesticidally-inclined (which we're not in this garden). But why you would wait to act until each of the white-frilled scales had produced 3,000 more of its kind, I don't know. So we scraped away every single scab and its furry bundle of potential progeny, while wondering why the freeloading wild birds (who cost us a small fortune in catering) wouldn't help out with a friendly beak or two.
But scale insects, it seems, are not that appetising to birds. When I proffered a couple to one of our hens, she looked at me as if to protest, "Puh-lease", before walking off to scratch at the newly-planted beans.
The appetites of birds, especially our spoilt bantams, are hard to gauge, but I'm learning. It's "no thanks" to scale insects, slugs and large snails, but "yes, I'll have that" to lettuce seedlings, young pea leaves and the flowers of my first and only planting of saffron crocus (prompting unkind thoughts of pre-saffroned chicken biryani).
At least the hens pay their way (sort of) with delicious eggs the size of ping-pong balls. The pigeon, however, was another matter. It tumbled from its nest on a high building in town, landing helpless on the busy pavement. It hadn't a hope of survival. Except that it did, because my kind-hearted husband, who was passing, stuffed it into his jacket and brought it home to me. I was horrified, having spent the past several years securing the bird table from its kind. In this garden, feral pigeons are as welcome as rats.
But the omelette-coloured down on its little head won me over. Which is just as well, because shoving a feeding tube down a wriggling squab's neck - several times a day - is a labour of love (and the distance that a small bird can flick a gob of milled rice and milk is marvellous). I won't go into how distracting it is when one's kitchen is occupied by a young pigeon learning to fly - but we were very happy when it was proficient enough to take to the outdoors. After honing its aeronautic skills for a couple of days, it disappeared into the terrible storms of March. When it reappeared two days later, we greeted it as if it were the prodigal son (or daughter, as its sex is a mystery) and laid out a feast.
Of course, you can never have one feral pigeon. You have to have two or three, or 12. The species has a jackal-like nose for food. Now, the grey company of birds flaps in each morning shortly after dawn, and hangs around waiting beadily for breakfast. And while we try to feed only "our" bird, the others are not shy about muscling in. Where this is all leading, I'm afraid to think.
It's the same with snails: you can't have just the one. Which is why, when I saw the woman leaning over my wall to admire a snail crawling up an iris, I wanted to rap sharply on the window and shout "Do something! Don't just stand there looking all gloopy! Kill the b*stard!" (But I didn't.)
But back to the horse chestnut scale. Incredibly, a few days after our purge, the fur-lined bumps were back. This time, they were higher up the tree trunk, requiring some ladder-work to dislodge them and their revolting egg masses. On my way down, I passed an ant on her way up, bearing an aphid. A glance at the underside of a leaf showed a fine pastoral scene - a herd of greenfly being gently tended by ants. Yes, ants shepherd greenfly, and "milk" them - that is, they drink the sugary residue that comes out of their bottoms.
Most people don't know that this sort of thing goes on in a garden. And non-gardeners need never find out. It's the beginners I feel sorry for.
What starts out as two innocent rows of radishes and scallions grows into something that gets relentlessly bigger and bigger. Hosts of creatures appear (they were there all along, but you never saw them) doing all the awful things that creatures do. And once you notice them, you're responsible. Responsible for who gets to stay and who goes. And there are those you'd like to go, but they'd prefer to stay - resulting in pitched battles and sneaky guerrilla tactics on both sides.
Sometimes, and it's usually around dawn, being custodian of all this seething mass gets too much - for me at least. Far better, if you value your sleep, never to start.
Those are my thoughts as we swing into summer. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll leave you, as there's a pigeon at the window looking for its dinner.
DIARY DATE: Until June 27th: "Sculpture and Lace", exhibition fusing the two disciplines, by Ken Drew and Therese Kelly, at National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.