Apologies to Gary Larsen.
A neighbour's cows broke free yesterday, and were most attracted by my luscious little Tomatoes and Chillis - or more likely by the lush Kikuyu growth. (Doesn't it sound like a great movie title? "When The Cows Broke Free." Directed by Hitchcock. Or perhaps Woody Allen.)
Eight cows of various ages and sizes wandering around a veggie garden is a fast recipe for disaster. Fortunately OB The PhD was wide awake and alerted us almost immediately, so we were able to chase them off without too much catastrophe. The neighbour who they belong to is very ummmm.... insular? Keep to themselves. Their families have lived here for generations, and, even after eleven years and sundry attempts to "make contact" we are still considered "uitlanders" (foreigners.)
We do have a gate to close our entrance, but it seldom gets used since there is (normally) no threat. I am pretty sure that a farm worker left their gate improperly secured, and, for cows, grass is always greener elsewhere! Especially in veggie gardens.
We lost a few plants that got trampled - unfortunately one of the just-starting-to-flower Cherokee Purple Tomato bushes among them :-( but otherwise got off quite lightly.
Never truer, the saying, "Good fences make good neighbours." (Unless the fence in question is 2.5m high and highly electrified and reinforced with multiple layers of mesh of various gauges. But that's another story for another day.)
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