This is the second entry from my draft manuscript, working title: Spring in the Cottage Garden.
I have come to terms with almost every animal in our garden. Possums, rats, mice, rabbits, probably ferrets and stoats: the rodents that are so ostracised here in Aotearoa for their impact on native bird populations have even been reluctantly accepted as part of the ecosystem (I considered trapping but theorised that we do more for birds than against them, so the scales are in the birdsā favour). Iāve accepted root-chomping slaters, plant-felling cutworms, sap-sucking aphids, and even accepted a few vines of bindweed.
Wasps, however, lead me to still consider a career in assassination. Not because they do harm to the plants I am growing (they are, of course, a pollinator) but because of the harm they do to the precious biodiversity in my garden.
We have five ānuisance waspsā that have been accidentally introduced to Aotearoa during the 20th century: Gā¦
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