Well, I have to say that temperatures over 40ºC are just awful. Monday was the killer day, although Tuesday was still jolly hot. By just after breakfast, it was already over 30ºC and just kept climbing. We had to go out to a meeting in the afternoon (fortunately somewhere that was air conditioned), and just the few kilometres in the car (with the air con on) were nearly unbearable and with the air con, extremely expensive in fuel too. It didn't get down to 33ºC until well after 9pm, when we sat out for a bit but not for long. In town, the two pharmacies agreed it was over 40, but couldn't decide if it was 42, 43 or 44. Any were too hot!
The following morning I went to The Garden to check on the boy cats and see the damage to the potagers. The cats were fine, but very pleased to have gravy. As for the plants? Well I was pretty convinced we had lost at least 2 of the butternut plants, half the chillies, half of the leeks, and some of the beans. Some plants had just rejected the fruits they were carrying, so the five set butternuts were yellow and gone, the courgettes had no viable female flowers, and the aubergines had no flowers full stop.
Nature is amazing though - among the photos below taken today, there are aubergines ready to be picked, flourishing borlotti beans, a newly set butternut, some small chard seedlings that survived and are pulling away, the parsnips that survived (2 didn't make it), and a chilli set on a different but equally abused plant. The leeks are flourishing too. Sadly the sweetcorn has been provoked into flowering too soon and too short to produce much of interest, but hey!
How did the wildlife survive the heat? OK as far as we can tell - there is evidence that the resident doe and faun made it through and in fact the faun looks pretty healthy to my eye. The local buzzards are making a lot of noise as are the wood peckers. There are no obvious corpses - I think they just head for cover and wait until it's over.
It's the opera season in Baugé, so I must cut this short and do a bit of ironing before making salads for the interval picnic (it's a Glyndebourne style opera festival), but this week has seen a notable anniversary. It is five years since Zola's Gotcha Day - to celebrate she rolled around on hedgehog pee for a happy 5 minutes.
Until next week!
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