SOME people who used to live up the road had a little sign in their front garden that always made me smile when I walked past.

“I fought the lawn and the lawn won” was what it said. I knew just what they meant.

All you could ever really say for our own lawn, even at its best, was that it was green.

It was a bit on the bumpy side, and it was hard to tell the grass from the clover.

But hey, I’ve never been a perfectionist (too lazy) and as regular readers will know, I prefer a landscape that looks natural, rather than primped and manicured.

My laissez-faire attitude, however, was put to the test on Monday when I returned from a weekend away.

Ravaged is not too strong a word to describe the view out of my kitchen window.

We couldn’t, on this occasion, blame Poppy the dog, an enthusiastic digger of flower beds who regards it as a great game if we tell her off, leaping into the air like a springbok and whizzing round the garden at top speed ready for a chase.

The culprits (spotted this morning) were a pair of crows, feasting, as I now understand, on chafer grubs or leatherjackets, which will have been quietly munching their way through our grass roots.

I’ve seen similar damage caused by badgers in the past – up at Old Sarum, for instance. But I had no idea that birds – which, of course, we’ve always encouraged – could wreak such havoc.

I spent an hour seeking advice from gardening blogs.

Many of them bemoan the fact that once-common pesticides have been outlawed by the EU.

I don’t. We wouldn’t poison our garden with chemicals even if we could.

(And I do worry that once we’ve Brexited, a government in thrall to big multi-nationals and agri-business will be only too keen to ditch much of the Brussels-inspired legislation that protects our environment.) Next summer, I discovered, we’ll be able to try biological control, watering in microscopic nematodes which will infect the little varmints with a fatal bacterial disease.

And if it works, even though we call ourselves nature lovers, great will be the rejoicing in the Riddle household.

But since the autumn leaves haven’t even finished falling yet, we’ve got a while to wait.

In the meantime, the only other course of action I’ve seen suggested is to invest in a large black plastic sheet to spread over what remains of the lawn overnight.

Apparently it will bring the grubs closer to the surface so the crows won’t have to dig quite so hard for their breakfast.

Alas, it amounts to no more than shutting the stable door when the horse has long since skedaddled.

Come the spring, we’re going to have to re-seed a large area.

Next question: When we’ve done that, how on earth will we keep a lively lurcher off it?

anneriddle36@gmail.com