Last week I complained of frost and we had more of it too. Now people get very upset by sharp frosts and imagine the worst and want to remove anything that might have been affected as soon as possible. I find it is worth waiting a bit. While we know that there will be no early season figs - the hint is that the tiny fruits and the leaf buds are black, brittle and horrid - I'm not giving up yet on plums, peaches, pears or apples. Some still have blossom and the flowers are more hardy than the tiny fruits, while until the tiny fruits fall off, well, you never know! Apple and quince are just coming into their own - quince has to be the prettiest blossom!
Last week I was upset as the honesty seemed to have been affected by the frost and I expected it to collapse and go black. Not a bit of it! Today I was admiring it and I can not remember ever seeing better!
So we have had winter frosts, spring showers, summer sunshine and autumn gales this week. Storm Diego rattled through on Friday, bringing heavy rain, strong winds even inland and bringing down power cables. He blattered our broad beans which are looking a bit sorry for themselves, but I hope will pick up tomorrow in the sun. This afternoon we had a picnic tea in the Garden in lovely sunshine. In Canada, April is considered the cruellest month due to extremes of weather (and the Canadians really do extremes of weather), but that may become the new normal for us here in Western Europe too I guess. Last night we had a dramatic sunset to add to the mix.
It's been a quiet week on the trail camera front - just one fuzzy bottom of what I think is a boar passing through. I will move the camera somewhere more interesting soon.
The orchids in the Orchard and Meadow are starting to rev up to flowering, well one has a well developed flower head, while the lizard orchids are looking more and more like they are preparing for world domination. It is actually the time when the bee orchids go discrete prior to putting on their delightful show in May.
However one of the domestic orchids is putting on a fine show of three flowers. For some reason I find it very difficult to take a good photo of them all, but here is one bloom.
Today the French are voting in the first round of the presidential elections, and we can only watch in envy, not being citizens and not having a UK vote either. The news services keep giving an update on the turnout so far - last time I looked it was close to 70%, some 4% down on the same time five years ago. It is a worry as there are some real nutty candidates, some with truly offensive policies. In many ways the real campaign will start tonight at about 10pm when they are 95% confident they know who the top two candidates will be, having seen off (possibly) the nutters. Fingers crossed!
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