December 29th. – The Mice

We have a little shed in our vegetable garden.  Two of its walls are rough grey stone, big blocks all piled up higglety piggelty.  The other two are made of left over bits of wood from various sources, nailed onto huge beams retrieved from some demolition site somewhere long ago.  Its floor cannot be described as anywhere near level and is made up of ancient cracked concrete.  Somewhat incongruously, it has two windows which have double glazing and net curtains.  In the summer it’s full of seedlings, muddy welly boots, tools of every type, stools, a barbecue, empty lemonade bottles which of course make excellent cloches.  In the golden days of autumn Bill brought bag after lumpy, bulging bag full of our own home grown potatoes into this little shed.  We were so proud of them – our first big success as vegetable gardeners, knobbly and firm, creamy white inside and pink skinned.  Better by far than some of our other produce – the leggy Brussel sprouts that fed the wood pigeons rather than us, the cabbages that supported dense populations of bright green caterpillars and not much else, the sweet corn we planted too late and all its promise came to nothing.  But the potatoes looked good, tasted good and there were lots of them, enough to last right through to the spring.  So Bill wrapped them carefully in old newspapers, put them in bags that we originally got full of coal for our fires, coal which is now burning daily and keeping us warm through the winter chill.  Then came the ‘big freeze’ as the TV have taken to calling it. 

But today it’s a thaw and Bill decides to go and see how the potatoes have fared.  We grit our teeth for the possibility that they have been frozen and are now nothing but a mushy mess.  Off he goes through the rain, and comes back a bit later.  ‘The news is good’, he says ‘The potatoes are fine.  Except for this’.  He holds out his hand and in it is half a potato, ridged with numerous little teeth marks. ‘They’ve opened a whole bag and they’re all over the floor’.  We look at each other.  We should be cross.  We grew them, worked so hard digging, earthing up, watering - their ours, now they’re spoiled.  But then we visualise these little thieves, shivering in the icy weather, perhaps trying desperately to look after minute grey silky babies.  We imagine their tiny pink noses sniffing the bags, their whiskers twitching in excitement, then their sharp little teeth tackling the tough sack and dodging the chunky potatoes as they bounce out across the floor.  Try as we will, we can’t regret that we have had to share our produce with such dainty visitors, any more, to be honest, than we really mind the green caterpillars which result in fluttering cabbage white butterflies, or the wood pigeons that coo so soothingly as we work the garden in the spring.  I suppose, in reality, it is a community garden.