Things that happen in the night

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I have seen one at last. I heard about people doing this in lockdown, but I had not seen one in our area. Now I have! For some reason people have been knitting tops for royal mail post boxes. The big round boxes, I mean, that stand freely on the footpaths in our streets. The rectangular boxes would not be as easy to fit. But the one I have seen fits as snugly as a beret.

After reading about it in the Star, I saw mine in Ellesmere in the north of the county, but I imagine that there are others. I took a photo, astounded by the skill of the knitters who had made a figure and a horse with great detail and ingenuity. I wonder if it appeared overnight in the secret of darkness like our famous Banksy. No one was taking any notice of it as they passed by on their way to the shops – perhaps they had seen it before, but I hadn’t, and I was filled with excitement and wonder.

Where did all this start? I know that in lockdown knitting became more popular and perhaps the top of a post box was just waiting for a hat!

Something appeared on our basil plants seemingly overnight too. And at first it was not so exciting. Something is eating our basil plants. I first ordered a plant online from my supermarket. It was delivered with the rest of my groceries fresh and ready to garnish our tomato dishes. It was on the kitchen table for us to help ourselves until it began to wither. Mr T took it out and, dividing it into three, he planted them in the greenhouse. We have had basil all through the summer but now something is getting to it, there are big holes in the leaves.

The culprit is a big green caterpillar which, on investigation, turns out to be the larva of the yellow underwing moth. It is now in a special container with food, in our utility room on a shelf. We can watch it through glass sides to check that all is well, and our basil leaves are not being attacked now. It is getting fatter and keeps on burrowing in the soil we have given it. It will stay there until the spring when it changes into a chrysalis. Then next summer we will let the adult out when it emerges. We have given it a name – Basil – no surprise there.

But our squashes are a surprise. They have been spurred on by the recent rain, then the milder temperatures and they have swollen rapidly. The spaghetti marrow is my favourite.





 

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