As of 30 minutes ago, it's official, here in Maine et Loire we are on red alert for high temperatures. I won't disagree as in my office on the north side of the house, it is 29ºC and heading to 30ºC. One thing that means is that I will not be doing battle with YouTube to load up more video, you will have to make do with stills. If you don't believe me, see the outdoor thermometer, hanging in the shade in the garden at 2pm (so two and a half hours ago).
It has been hot, averaging 28ºC or higher for over a week now, although last weekend there was a bit of a breeze. Even so, we have seen the ravages of relatively mild heat stroke and I can only exhort people to be careful.
As an example of what the heat is doing, here are two photos of one of my butternut squashes - the first is in sunlight, the second this morning while still shaded. The squash has a natural defence mechanism to allow the leaves to flop when really hot and then repump up when it cools down, however the yellow scorch marks are not part of the plan. A couple of squash plants have set fruit, but they may well reject them if this continues. The courgettes have given up for the moment too - I had to buy a couple at the market yesterday!!!
We grow potatoes under weed suppressant mat. It keeps the awful perennial weeds at bay, saves the need for earthing up and bizarrely provides habitat for a number of useful critters - slow worms, snakes, toads. This year the potatoes are planted in soil that is as near to clay without being able to use it on a potter's wheel as you can get. It's really heavy and horrible when wet. Currently the top layer resembles pusilane - the pumice-like rocks you can get as decorative mulch or for use in a septic tank filter bed, but about 4cm below the surface, there is still a hint of moisture in there. There are also potatoes - look what we got from just one plant, noting that it has hardly rained and I do not water the spuds! Dinner in the making.
I have rarely had a conversation with a farmer when they didn't complain about the weather in some way. There is chuntering going on now about drought and poor yields. They are working day and night to get the cereal crops in, collect in straw and hay, turn the stubble so it is less likely to catch fire (although that process can also start a fire if a plough hits a flint), and get water and feed to grazing cows and goats. This year I can understand their angst, as I watch a crop of fodder maize near us develop - it is very early, but the cobs are meagre and the leaves are now curling with the heat and lack of water. Maize is a very greedy crop. Sunflowers, once they germinate, need less water. Again they are a bit early this year, and fields have gaps where germination was poor, but there is still little better than a field of sunflowers against a blue sky, even when slightly past their best.
The local wildlife has to cope with all this too. The southern part of the Meadow includes a small bog and three small, spring-fed ponds which means that the deer, boar, badgers and others have somewhere to go and drink. I strongly suspect that a family of boar are actually living in the bog at the moment - they would be foolish not to - but it is off limits to us at this time of year due to scrub overgrowth. The doe and her faun are knocking around the area, while the faun develops - they seem to come past the trail camera every couple of days. She enjoys eating the lower leaves off the good pear tree, but fortunately not the pears (we have other plans for them...). The faun is getting braver and larger.
And with that, it really is too hot to sit by a computer any longer! I'm off to watch the end of the Tour stage at Carcassone.
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