The scary scarecrow (present)

We have a wonderful gardener. He stayed with me, after the Prof left - lucky me. I think the Prof asked him to work for him too, but at the time Owen didn't have extra days open, and chose to stay with me instead.

He was a saving grace in this big, daunting world of taking care of the property and garden by myself. I have never needed to tell Owen what to do, he just gets on with it. When I arrive home, the whole garden has been taken care of. How he manages to do it all in one day a week, I can't understand.

He started a veggie garden for me too. His enthusiasm is infectious. I have an understanding with him now; he takes veggies as he wants for himself, leaving more than enough for us. He asks for seeds, and when I see again - we are eating fresh veggies. This year - has been a bit harder. With all the rain - we had "crop failure".

Not daunted, Owen has continued to plant into the autumn. He started up some spinach, and to his disgust, the birds began eating it. His first attempts at solving the problem, was to put up some net. This only had the effect of giving the birds some nice shade to chow in.

His next attempt had us in stitches. When we got home one evening, we found a new character had been added to the plot! Yep  - he constructed a scarecrow. Where on earth did he find all the "parts" needed for this?

Our mirth at the new resident, only increased when the birds, quite happily carried on their destructive ways, right under SCARDY's feet.

We sort of forgot about Scardy, and the weekend arrived. It was a "kiddies" weekend. Carissa and Eric grabbed their bikes from the shed, peddled up and down the driveway for a bit, and then, unsuspectingly drove round the side of the house to the back yard.
It took but a moment before there were 2 screaming children coming like banshees through the door.
"Daaaaaaaaaaaddddddddyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.......there is a SPOOK in the garden - there is a monster there..."

Ummmm - it took us quite some time to recover from laughing. We introduced them to Scardy, and he has since been given facial features by the children. They stuck some sticks into him for hair, and had some fun.

So - Owen's scarecrow doesn't do much in the way of scaring birds, but works real good on scaring kids!

And Owen? Well, he has decided that if he can't scare the birds away - perhaps he can "outplant" them. My veggie garden is now completely planted up with spinach. In his heavy accent, he says to me: let's see if the birds can eat up ALL that spinach.