This has been another record breaking week for weather in France, with extremely mild, if not hot, temperatures further south, and even round here! On Thursday and Friday it was up to 18ºC officially and warmer if you were in the sun and sheltered from breezes. Yesterday I was able to enjoy the market in central Baugé without the bother of a jacket and needed to crack the car windows after leaving it in the full sun while doing the cat food run. It is not surprising that nature is getting confused therefore. This beautiful creature basked on laundry drying on the line for several hours yesterday.
I'm not too fussed about the elderberry having leaves out already - they are generally pretty precocious and also pretty robust so a sharp frost won't do any damage. It will be a while yet before the flower buds appear.
The early and rather wild plums are even further advanced and now are starting to have fully open flowers on branches that are well sheltered from the wind. Realistically if I get a good crumble's worth of fruit before the birds, deer and martins do their worst, I feel lucky, so again I'm not too worried.
I am far more concerned about the key fruit crops like the Victoria Plum (currently behaving), the apples (again behaving) and the quince. For trees that have some of the last blossom, the quince leaf buds appear quite early but the flower buds are within those little green bundles, so yes, I am worried about these!
It is still too early to be thinking about planting anything - the next crops to go in will be the onion sets, but not for another four weeks or so, and after that, it will be the turn of the potatoes. I aim for the traditional planting day of Good Friday, but never actually achieve it! That is still a good 6 weeks off, and yet the seed potatoes are chitting away very nicely.
As it isn't time to being planting, and therefore is a bit early to start nagging about getting the rotavator out of the shed and making noises, I'm looking at a different project. I'm aiming for a back fence for the flower bed that will provide some support when the wind comes up strongly from the south west and will also protect the bed. and particularly small seedlings, from the debris splurted out by mowers and strimmers. So far the materials for making this fence have arrived by the bed, but some of them need to be cut down and have points added!
Well, that's all the excitement I can spot for this week, so I'll leave you with a picture of some miniature daffs that I bought last year for my Mum and once they had done their thing, planted in the flower bed. They have come up beautifully this year and make me smile each time I see them.
Have a good week!
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