My money's on the cunning little vixen

MY MONEY tree tried to commit suicide the other day, of which more later, because it's the Disney hawthorn in Kew Gardens that gets top arborial billing this week. I can't tell you the hawthorn's exact whereabouts because then I'd have to kill you, except to say that it's in the conservation area and has three homemade bird feeders dangling off it, two half coconut shells and an old tuna tin.

I call it the Disney tree because the minute I fill the first coconut with bird seed, the air is full of whirring wings and I have to duck for cover as cartoon tits, great and blue, zoom around me. You can sit on a bench opposite and watch as nuthatches and the odd coal tit join in; down on the ground, chaffinches, dunnocks, robins and blackbirds hoover up the overspill. A pair of brown rats, one blind in its left eye, usually swing by, and I once saw a water vole - the river is only three minutes' walk away. Occasionally the golden pheasants turn up - the brightly coloured males looking like samurai warriors, the females as if they've put up with a lifetime of breeding and household chores.

Suddenly, all the ground birds freeze, then scramble in panic, which means the star of the show has arrived. But it isn't Snow White who comes bowling out of the undergrowth, heading straight for me: it's a tiny vixen. She's less than a foot off the ground - the smallest fox I've ever seen - and in perfect condition: no mange, no ribs showing. Lots of the locals feed her, so she's at home with humans in the daytime, though on her guard.

And she'll eat anything. I took her a chicken carcass once, so she'd know there was more to life than biscuits and cake. The minute she smelt it, she grabbed it and took off. Some things are too precious to devour in front of an audience.

I consider this cunning little vixen a good omen. A money tree trying to commit suicide - not so great. The damn thing leapt off my hall windowsill, took out the pile of bills on the table underneath, then deposited most of its compost inside the six pairs of shoes by the front door which I keep meaning to tidy away.

I'm desperate not to see any symbolism in this. I've grown that Crassula ovata from a tiny rooting; it must be at least 20 years old, so this isn't the first economic downturn it's experienced. What is it trying to tell me?

It would be uncharitable to spread unnecessary panic. Financial "experts" are coming out of the woodwork to tell us what's gone wrong with the economy and how to put things right. But just in case my money tree is a bad omen, and one that portends disaster on both a macro and a micro-economic level - ie mine - I've trimmed and repotted it and given it a bracing talk. I think there's a fair chance it will come through.