Trap for young players

Lynda Hallinan puts down her fly spray can and pots up carnivorous plants for pest control.

- Lynda Hallinan

My grandmother Patricia never had a bad word to say about anyone. “You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,” she’d declare, though anyone who has ever found a rotten banana at the bottom of a fruit bowl knows this to be blatantly untrue, for acetic acid is to blowflies what nectar is to honey bees.

To be fair, Grandma Pat’s kindness didn’t extend to the actual flies in her often-quoted proverb. A farmer’s wife, she was as handy as anyone with an aerosol can, because blowflies and country life are incompatible in late summer. Not only are flies the bane of sheep’s backsides, they make a beeline for the preserving pot when I’m churning out litres of plum chutney.

It doesn’t help that my tiny kitchen, situated on the opposite side of our house to the prevailing sou’wester, turns into a blowfly bordello whenever anyone dares open a window in summer. In they fly, seeking shelter and sustenance, and it’s a devil of a job to entice them back out again.

But as I grow older, I’m getting softer. I don’t like to kill anything, with the exception of weeds and rats. In my spray-free garden, I let birds and beneficial insects tackle the bad bugs, while my eldest son Lucas’s carnivorous plant collection is now doing a sterling job indoors.