It was pretty brutal and unsubtle, but at 5:45pm on Thursday afternoon, the fine weather arrived. It had been announced for that morning, so I had planned to mow on Thursday afternoon, but as the rain didn't stop until perhaps 5am, and there was no wind, there was no way the grass would be dry enough. Yesterday was therefore mowing day - and annoyingly, although promised that there would be light rain only on the western most tip of Finistere and the top of the Cotentin peninsular, I got remarkably soggy!
Not much happened during the week - I worked, which is probably a good thing. I had a tender rejected - not such a good thing, but kind of expected, as I am on an organisation's list for "good for a tender if you need to make up numbers". I work on the basis that one day they will have to choose me out of sheer embarrassment at having put me through the process so many times! Not this time it would appear.
When I went to Aldi yesterday, enough people were generous to their mothers and well prepared (it is mother's day here), so that there were some of their annual batch of cheap small orchids left over. So I got me one - a different colour to the other two.
As I said, I went mowing yesterday, and the wild irises are out at the lake. One of ours that hasn't flowered before was out at The Shack, while some that I hadn't noticed before at Chinon were looking nice and blousy, so here are a selection of irises.
This morning we were working at The Shack in the garden there. John needed to rotavate a patch that had been covered since last summer before the underlying clay sets hard for the rest of the season, so lifted the weed suppressant mat. In doing so, he met three of our assistants in keeping slugs and snails under control, although they had to be evicted or they would have become blood and bone fertiliser!! Meet the slow worm, the adder and Timid Toad!
It has warmed up enough, and the plants have got so tall, that we could remove the plastic cloches from the tomato plants and tuck them away somewhere away from the sun, so that they are ready to use in the autumn or next spring. If the peppers and/or chillies are doing well enough, they may need a bit of cover in October to finish ripening fruits, but otherwise it will be next April or so when they come back out. There is a bit of caterpillar damage on a couple of the cabbages, but they still look good and we are munching our way through the broad beans. I'd better confess that the sweetcorn has once again been a disappointment with 51 seeds sown and only 7 coming up. We did a bit of forensic seed seeking and found nothing, absolutely nothing. Some something has had it away with my seeds, and I need to resow, assuming I can find any more seeds of course!
I also went on a bee orchid hunt, as usual, and while some had disappeared, I found a new patch and got a half way decent photo for once!
All that left me a bit tired, so I had to offer myself a chunk of hammock time to recover - well that's my excuse anyway! And it is Sunday after all! Until next week!
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