No sun-drenched photos today as the weather has taken a colder and duller turn, and we wait agog for some rain! We've not had rain, proper rain, since John seeded a new lawn about 3 weeks ago - blame him!! We had to go back to The Shack today to feed the Boys in the Country, so took some time to check the Asian Hornet trap we have there (I did write about it last year, but can't immediately find the blog). I'd been pretty chuffed to find one critter in there on Friday last week, but today there were 3! Nasty brutes too. It is important to trap and kill these over-wintered queens as they have small nests dotted about, in which they are raising their fertile brood of up to a dozen future queens. Get them now and that is up to a dozen per queen big nests full of bee eating hornets that won't happen.
We also admired, or tried to, the shallots that are starting to come up. We were so pleased with how they grew last year, that we bought rather more this year, and there is a larger bed with 33 sets trying to do what they do. They are hampered in that by big fluffy cats who find nicely turned, dry earth a lovely way to remove excess fur, and roll around in an abandoned fashion. This is Donald doing his thing.
We walked the boundaries to check that all was well, and met the neighbours at the bottom of the orchard where there are a couple of small ponds. They thought we were very interesting.
And then we admired cherry blossom along the boundary of the wild flower meadow - you can see just how different it is to the pear blossom I showed yesterday, can't you? Sadly as it was cold, there was no comforting buzz of busy bees and no cherry blossom perfume, but that will be back later in the week with the sun.
The sun should be back tomorrow, for rather prettier pictures!
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