What I fail to understand is…

Why?  I mean, WHY??

Let me explain.

When I decided to have a Yin/Yang bed in the back lawn, I thought that, for the first year, it would be a good idea, in terms of weed aggravation, to fill it with annuals.  Still, I’ve kept it watered and fallow since the winter, taken a bucketful of bindweed roots out of it, and a fair few brambles.  Weed growth has been almost non-existent, apart from that.  Until Wednesday, when the recent rains have sung their siren song.  Both halves looked like the green baize on one of the snooker tables at the Crucible Theatre during the World Championships.

So, out came the swoe (rather like a sharpened golf club), and, hey presto, all neat again.  Until this morning.  When we’re back to baize.

That is not what I fail to understand, though.  That’s just background.

No, it’s my lupins.  My little Avalune annual lupins.  Here’s a picture of them, from the Thompson and Morgan catalogue, where I got them, so I hope they won’t mind me filching their picture…

They are annuals, they flower in the first year, they only grow to about 16 inches, and I grew them from said seed.

They have stood on the path that runs up past the greenhouse since the end of April.  Here they are, with their friends, on 6 May:

If you stand where I stood to take the photograph, and step 6 paces to the right, you will fall into my Yin/Yang bed.

Everything grew well, and was untroubled by any of the local wildlife, except for the odd slug that nibbled a leaf on the Nicotiana suaveolens.  You see, I learnt from the rabbit eating the rosebushes (and foxgloves) episode.  Leave them close to where you’re going to plant them and see what happens.  Nothing happened.

Here’s what I fail to understand.  Why, if these young plants stood unharmed for a couple of months about six feet from where they were to be planted, why, oh why, when they were planted the weekend before last did I find them this Thursday morning, like this:

All of them.  There’s nothing left but stalks.

And at tea time, a large rabbit was nonchalantly hopping from the area of the greenhouse to plant its front paws in the new bed and investigate the possibility of a little snack.  There was nearly violence.  I’m not sure the back door will ever be the same again.

I think Beatrice Potter’s Mrs McGregor had exactly the right idea…

Okay, rant over.  I’m off for a cup of hot chocolate and a gin and rhubarb biscuit…