This year had very strange and challenging weather. First,
until March there was a drought where we had very low rainfall all winter and
hose pipe bans. Of course, from the day the hose pipe bans were announced we
had continuous rain until the water company removed them. It was certainly one
of the wettest droughts on record!
The consequences of this period of rain have been felt in
our apple crop. We have around a dozen old apple trees that were originally put
in long before we came to our home... and they haven’t shown the slightest hint
of an apple this year! Normally it’s a case of not even being able to harvest
them all – we give a lot of them to the sheep every year. This year nada. For
the first time since we moved into this house we have had to buy in apples for
crumble! The Shame!
One good result of the rains is that unlike last year I have
not been stung by a horde of evil bees while doing the scything. On the other
hand the rain seems to have encouraged the evil red ants to make dozens of
nests in the long grass. Swish! Goeth the scythe. Attack! Goeth the ants. Let
me tell you now ants in your pants is NOT FUNNY.
I seem to be very sensitive to them. My skin goes really red
and scratchy.
Tomatoes... blight.
Runner Beans have done well.
Sweatcorn... we were lucky. The rain stopped at just the
right time so this year our sweatcorn crop is better than ever. Delicious, too!
Sorry about the lack of updates on the blog. I will try to
write more often, but my original plans went haywire due to medical problems
which meant that something had to go... and this blog was it! But maybe I will
post more often now things have settled down.
Hint for the day: If you are scything in a tall meadow, make
sure that you wear long trousers, and tuck them into your socks for maximum
protection. You don’t want ants in your pants! Oh, no sir.
No comments:
Post a Comment