Cows by day, cowboy landscapers by night…

Cows by day….

OMG to quote the teens of today what a sleepless night we had last week..

Our tree filled and garden oasis of a property is surrounded by dairy land.  Our landlords farm in fact.  Obviously some fencing broke which set a quite large herd of cows free.  During the afternoon I headed them away a couple of times with the help of Loki (Bearded collie; he was born for this action!).  I thought there might’ve been an evening feed out and the farmer would gather them back in again.

Bahahahahahaha!

Sometime after dinner we hear a clip clop down the driveway.  Cows are quite huge hey.  There’s nothing like opening your front door to a herd of them as they turn their heads to look at you dolefully, as though you’re the one intruding!  We had no way of blocking them out and by this stage it was dark and they were EVERYWHERE; front lawn, orchard, forest, driveway and you betcha, the garden…

Massive beasts outside my window.

..cowboy landscapers by night

I prayed to every known god and goddess that they can have the broad beans but please please please leave my mother herbs alone and don’t knock over all my cuttings.  It worked thank freakin’ whatever god heard my call!

I had braced myself for total devastation in the morning… and if I was a lawn fanatic my worst nightmares would’ve come true.

Once was green lawn..

But I’m not a lawn fanatic, quite the opposite in fact so this has presented me with new exciting possibilities!  My clary sage patch unfortunately was on their flight path and has been trampled to smithereens, there’s big plug holes in the garlic patch, they’ve pruned the apple trees though I wouldn’t employ them to do it again, bit rough mind!  Somehow they side stepped most plants and even left me with my broad beans.  We have a whole lot of new tracks through the forest and they’ve cleared potential picnic areas.  So all in all, I’m actually grateful for the marauding herd, oh and of course I now have plenty of fresh lovely cow manure, I no longer have to stare longingly at all the poo in the surrounding paddocks!

Here’s some more photos of the cows work…and I’m showing you these so you can see how amazing it’s going to be in three months time.  And you know, it’s a bit of a lesson too in how potentially a devastating or even just an inconvenient thing can be a harbinger of growth or change for the good.

Ground is clear now for a herbal ley under the apple trees. Shame about the rough pruning!

Cows like mint

View from up on high

There were red onion seedling in here

That’s the top of the leeks taken care of