Monday 9 July 2007

Bastards bastards bastards...

...bastards bastards bastards bastards.

My allotment has been vandalised. The greenhouse tipi that used to look like this

Now looks like this with several bricks and a saw bench inside it

The bender greenhouse now has ventilation

The shed has been relocated to the middle of a flower bed and repositioned on its side, leaving the green roof in a pile on top of some strawberries

And I will never again be able to safely stick my fingers into my soil because it’s all completely covered with tiny shards of glass. There is also a layer of large and medium sized shards of glass which I spent two hours today picking up without seeming to make much difference. There are at least three whole greenhouses in there in little bits, which at least might set the slugs back a bit.

This is quite pretty though

8 comments:

Anab1 said...

OMG.. how awful. My alloment has a very sturdy, pointy fence all around it and some pretty ingenious padlocks and gates to get in and out. I would be mortified if that happened to me.. all that time, expense and poor baby plants. I LOVE your teepee greenhouse though. I might try making something similar depending on what I can scavenge for free. Hope you are able to recover.

Ralph Mills said...

Fuckers (EMF). Our six foot hedges help, and our frequent break-ins concentrate on sellable items such as motorised tools. The kids simply mess about a bit, smoke and eat any food they find. Our shop has been broken into and seeds stolen (!). But so far, apart from a few obscenities painted on sheds, we've not had real vandalism. It must be so dispiriting after all your hard work...

Paul said...

Oh no! I really feel for you. That tipi looked so cool!

My shed got raided a couple of years ago and my nice new toold were stolen. Recently we had massive new fences installed around our plots. So far so good. My friend recently caught some teenage yobs on his plot and frightened the shit out of them. He had his airgun with him at the time. They won't be back.

Don't be disheartened though. I'm sure you can rescue it. If not, there are always ASBOS...

Anonymous said...

I am so sorry to hear about your allotment. Dont give up...the land has a nack of recovering. I dont know exactly how bad it all looks but maybe you should replace the top-soil after the growing season ends. Hope things get better. Love Slug.

James Higham said...

You wonder what possesses people to do these things. For what satisfaction? So, so easy to destroy - weak people do it. To construct and maintain though is the attribute of the strong.

Anonymous said...

Awful. Truly awful.

Suggest mantraps. Or a sceptic tank with the lid lost.

Oh. That would be illegal.

Pity.

Alice said...

Thanks to everyone who sent their sympathy, and such creative ideas for how to catch and torture whoever did this. I'm feeling much better now.

The trouble is that we've got a very long stretch of fence that borders a public park, and also a fairly long bit that borders a footpath which has itself been ASBO'd - meaning noone who needs it can get access. I'll probably write a rant about this at some point but there's a link here about it http://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/section-item.asp?sid=12&iid=2213

The council say they can only pay for small sections of fencing at a time, so we'll be trying to raise our own funds this winter to get more of it replaced.

If I took out an air rifle around here the vandals would probably produce even bigger guns (someone I know found two guns dumped in his garden last year), and replacing the topsoil is too much like hard work, especially when I've spent two years digging manure into this lot. I'm just gradually picking it all up and imagining what deprived childhoods they must have had to drive them to such destruction.

Installing a sceptic tank is tempting though...

Anonymous said...

get a shar pei!