Perfect Fruit & Veg

We only have a small area of ground in our garden on which to grow a few vegetables and fruit bushes, the main crops at the moment being raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrants, courgettes and kale. Today's harvest included a large bowl of raspberries, probably about 5 pounds in weight, most destined for jam, and....

....eight kale leaves.

While I was preparing the two offerings I realised that neither contained a single item of wildlife. Usually, kale has caterpillars or eggs on its leaves, and good raspberries always used to have a scattering of maggots which, in my youth, I quite happily ate with the fruit.

The reason for this 'perfection' isn't difficult to find: I haven't seen a butterfly in the garden for ages, and there are very few moths around. Whether this is simply the present weather - we've just had another day of low cloud, drizzle and temperatures in the mid-teens - or whether the lack of insects in Golspie is down to something much more sinister, I do not know.