The goats wouldn’t object if I removed the barriers to what I like to think of as my part of the garden.
In the meantime, in order to eat the blackcurrant and redcurrant bushes,
Misty has to proceed like this:
Apparently it’s worth any amount of discomfort,
even dragging your two stomachs over;
your weight pressing them into the wire when they’re already as taut as water balloons.
Gazing at them over the fence, day after day, currant bushes
could easily become an obsession.
A Bad Guide 
We enjoy lamb with redcurrant jelly. You could threaten Misty with a like fate. But Topsy and co would never forgive you.
My wife uses redcurrant jelly in a cabbage dish that she cooks for our big Christmas party. The rest of the year we never think of redcurrants. Or blackcurrants, for that matter.
Going to WiPe now to find out more about these two plants, I am puzzled by the following sentence: “Currants are enjoyed by wombats and are commonly planted as an attractant.”
(from here)
After all, maybe Misty likes to sit on the fence.
Dearie, the ones who really like the redcurrants are the hens. They jump in the air to pull the berries off the branches.
I didn’t know the bushes were here to attract wombats. It’s not really working. We have badgers living close by, which are supposed to be similar, but I’ve never felt I ought to be attracting them with anything.
Sig, the lemurs that Tom Clark linked to in the previous post, do you have them in Mauritius?
Ø , “The rest of the year we never think of redcurrants.” Goodness me, then you must try Summer Pudding, a delightful dessert made from bread (slightly stale), redcurrants and raspberries. Eat with cream.
One tip: do not add strawberries nor blackcurrants, whatever the recipe might say – just reddies and rasps.
Summer pudding is very good. One of the best desserts you can have. I didn’t know about the blackcurrants, though.
The traditional Norwegian way to eat redcurrants is to detach them from the stalk and put the berries in a flat dish & sprinkle them with caster sugar. Then you put them in the fridge, while the sugar absorbs some of the juice.
As for blackcurrants, they are better tasting than redcurrants, in my opinion, not so sour. We eat them with cream and as jam. (Norwegian jam is thinner than British or American or French, it contains much less sugar. It’s really more like stewed fruit).
I love these visual narratives of yours.
Misty’s obsessive quest puts me in mind of the thirsty deer from the hills above here, who in dry times come down into the urban jungle to find any berries or other juicy things that are available. (Availability perhaps in the eye of the beholder.) Like Misty with the currants, they will go to any lengths to reach what they seek (of course, they are a bit better at fences). In particular they favour roses.
do you have them in Mauritius? (lemurs)
No, we have only long-tailed Macacas and tailless Homos.
Tailless sounds a bit … I don’t know. Drastic? Final?
Tom, thanks. I’ve only just started to lay it out like that.
Our goats are very fond of roses. They only get to eat wild ones, except by accident. I didn’t know deer ate them. The goats don’t eat lavender or thyme, for some reason. Those are all lovely roses. It’s true that it’s the chestnuts that take so long to grow, and I don’t think I could ever cut one down — why try? I have moved several roses successfully, though.
Black currants: I love black currant jam, not so much red currant jelly (but I agree it should be good with some meat dishes, like cranberry sauce which is also made from sour berries).
Black currant liquor is also delicious. In my father’s family there was a tradition of sipping a little black currant liquor on New Year’s Day, which we still observe. Since that is the only time we drink it, a bottle lasts for many years.
Our cat tries to eat the leaves of roses if we have some in a vase.