Picnik revisited & the thwarted Sweetcorn massacre

After seeing some of the interesting effects that Picnik did on other's photos I returned to the programme and the scales fell from my eyes! I had only focused on the initial editing options and never noticed the other tabs like Create. With such creative possibilities at my finger-clicks I felt a story bubbling up.

Last summer my husband & I decided to rent an allotment. Not one of the posh one that the Osnians hoe to perfection, but one on the margins of West Oxford, a part of the AAA: the Anarchist Allotment Association. Here we live in harmony with the weeds, the bees and the cabbage butterflies.

Though the AAA is an annexe to the Osney Allotments, we are so out of sight and soil-poor that we are pretty much ignored. Occasionally they send an inspector to encourage tidier plots and discourage the building of ramshackle sheds. Old-timers raise the alarm-flags to give us the chance of escaping through the hedgerow and over the stream since you cannot be encouraged without a face to face confrontation. Leaving notes of remonstration is hopeless, what with the wind blowing them away or being eaten by the cabbage butterfly larvaes.

Our new life was going diggingly well until a threat in the night: badgers! We had planted a patch of sweet corn that was coming to ear and the badgers could smell their sweetness wafting through the warm September air. First it was one plant knocked down, a few days later, another; they were tasting the ears to see if ready for the feasting. Drastic measures were required.

It was too late to build a fence strong & deep enough to keep the badgers out, so instead we dug-up and transplanted the corn to our patio many steep steps away from badger land. It worked and our sweetcorn continued to ripen in their new refuge bringing a happy ending to my tale.

YUM!