Last weekend, the weather was amazing, and we knew it couldn't last, that it wasn't right for the time of year. Although looking back through my diaries, it's not the first March that has been warm and sunny towards the end. We were promised rain during the week and a cold snap, perhaps snow. Well earlier in March they had been promising an end to relentless grey and sunshine, which didn't happen when promised, so you could forgive us for thinking the same about a cold snap and snow. We did rather yearn for rain.
Up until the end of Tuesday, it was very nice indeed. Warm and sunny and humming with bird and insect activity. I even had to water some bits of the vegetable patches. It was supposed to rain on Wednesday - a couple of millimetres at most doesn't help. But the cold and then the snow flurries did arrive, and really weren't nice, although nothing settled. Last night there was a sharp frost, and there will be another tonight. It has done bad things to flowers - the honesty, which I thought would be fine, is sagging as are the yellow tulips. The feral potatoes also caught the frost but I'm not too worried about them!
Not everything has been badly affected - yet. The cherry blossom is still pretty, without brown frost burns, although that may still come, and whether there will be any fruit is also a moot point. The Bright Lights Chard I sowed last year is also doing fine, although preparing to go to seed - there is enough for a good quiche later in the week and the chickens will enjoy it too. The plants will need to be sacrificed as we don't want them setting seed and that part of the plot will need a go with the rotavator in order to prepare it for other planting in May.
It was too cold and promised to be too cold again tonight to do much useful gardening today, so after a fairly short visit to supervise cats at The Shack, we went to the open weekend at l'Or de la Ruche nearby, a honey business. They got subsidies to put up a larger building to house stocks, the equipment to maintain 300 hives and also the equipment to manage the harvest from 300 hives. The roof is covered in solar panels which should produce 100kW of electricity - a good boost to local capacity. They are also home to the local campaign against Asian hornets.
There may be Saharan sand around, or it could just have been the clouds, but the sky to the east turned pink yesterday evening at sunset. It was most odd. This photo has not been tinkered with other than cropping out things I don't want you to see!
Finally, trail camera news and was there anything last week? Just one visitor this time - I think the cows in the back field and their electric fence have limited who is doing the rounds at the moment, so I have moved the camera again to see if I can track down the badger activity. Anyway, this fine fellow came visiting.
So first we have some footage of him nibbling a branch and looking around.
Then he seemed to think that the camera was edible!
We'll see what next week brings.
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