I have left you standing in the annals of futility. I have spent an entire morning last weekend lovingly planting small groups of my favourite crocuses, Cream Beauty and Blue Pearl, in carefully planned little groups of 30 at intervals along the lawn that edges the garden's most prominent flower beds. They were to be my final act of showing off in spring time.

In they went and, by Tuesday morning, the whole lot had disappeared - 600 in total. They had been ruthlessly excavated by un-announced intruders. The entire front line of the garden looks as if somebody had run over it with a custom-built tank.

How can any serious gardener feel any affection at all for wildlife? The culprits are certainly animal and although they only act at night time, I refuse to believe that they are blundering badgers or whatever is so red in tooth and claw that it leaves shredded feathers all over the far end of the lawn. I would dearly like to blame my tenant's cat and then ban it.

But the culprits are almost certainly squirrels, so far as they have survived my continuing attempts to snare them, stew them and serve them under pastry as a surprisingly respectable pie.

Maybe I went too far last February when I rounded off tarte à l'ecueril with the severed tail of one little offender, fixed on to the pastry surface and held in place by hidden matchsticks. I refuse to accept that this flourish gave them any international right of revenge. They are terrorists, pure and simple and if I receive one more soppy book telling me how to make my garden a habitat or "share it" with fur and feather, I will write nothing but counterblasts in the weeks surrounding Christmas, which is supposed to be the time for peace and goodwill between them and us.

I have read up on squirrels, and not only in the recipe books from wartime which several of you kindly sent me when I announced my intention of cooking them. Yes, I know they go surprisingly well with cider and that they should be slow-cooked to maximise the nutty flavour that appealed so much to the discerning palate of the impoverished Toulouse-Lautrec.

Squirrel literature is grossly defective. It supports my belief that we have not the slightest idea about most of the "friends" with whom we are "privileged" to share our long-suffering gardens, according to champions of the supposed compatibility of flower beds and anything on four legs.

Studies of squirrels are remarkably evasive about the beasts well attested aggression, tending to say only that they "drive out" or "eliminate" populations of red squirrels "over a period of time".

We are still much too soppy about them. I blame the Germans who sometimes call them Oak Kittens. Actually, I'm not sure this is entirely fair. Squirrels do behave like kittens because kittens are just as much of a menace in any patch of ground you are cultivating with rare and delicate flowers.

The real mystery about squirrels is not even discussed. How on earth do they know when and where I have planted hundreds of crocuses when the corms, buried two inches under the turf of the lawn, have no perceptible smell whatsoever? Nothing in the literature even discusses a squirrel's sixth sense or how it can be attuned to taking immediate advantage of the flowers for spring time that I most cherish. It is not even that they attack them in daylight. They have to have located and digested the entire planting in the hours of darkness. I was in the garden during the day and if they had tried it then, they would be under pastry this weekend.

I have known women who say that they can sense trouble on entering a house and I once had a horse which seemed able to sense undue effort about two minutes before I asked him to make it. These antennae are mysterious, but are possibly activated by something in the atmosphere. Some of you may even think that you can sense a good investment, but I bet you never discuss your bad investments too. The puzzle about the squirrel is that it senses buried crocuses, which are real objects, when they are completely invisible and giving off no odour. How do they do it?

While you tell me the answer, I will console myself by looking upwards and enjoying two sights that squirrels have yet to ruin. Both are contributors to that under-estimated phenomenon, the autumn fall in England. We have had some spectacularly warm and clear days and, probably, the air needs to sharpen to bring out the best. However, I already have two wonderful shows of colour that seem to be squirrel-resistant and worth anyone's trouble.

One of them is dangerously near the gutter, another favoured habitat for wildlife playing hide and seek but, so far, nothing has started to use it as a ladder in the playground.

For most of the year, Celastrus orbiculatus is rather a subdued climber with no flowers worth worrying about. From now, however, it is in its element, first turning its leaves to a spectacular yellow and then showing open clusters of ­brilliant scarlet seeds which are one of the best sights in autumn. You need to buy a hermaphrodite form in order to be sure of the self-fertilisation that maximises the show of seeds. Otherwise, there are no problems about this vigorous climber for any good soil. I am sure it would grow quite well into a small supporting tree without damaging it.

My second sight of the moment is, I think, completely immune to furry intruders. The great advantage of the climbing hydrangea is that it clings on to a wall without any need for wires or support. Hydrangea petiolaris is the best-known variety and the one I still value most because of the under-emphasised beauty of its yellow leaves in autumn. It begins quite slowly, but it will climb up any aspect, even to a modest height. It flowers in due course in summer but the leaves are spectacular.

And, if you have recently been bruised by wildlife, you will see an added attraction. It clings so tightly to a wall that they do not risk scrambling up it or trying to have sex in the upper branches. I have an evergreen outside the bathroom which is the mating-zone for anything on four legs that can run up a trunk. They will never run up the hydrangea and, as I replace the infernal mess they have made of my lawn this week, it is a relief to know that there is still at least one squirrel-free zone.

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