The headline floods of last weekend are subsiding slowly, despite the continued rain through the week, but it hasn't been as intense or as much - just 18.5mm through the week. The rivers and streams are getting back to normal while the ponds remain well charged. One evening I went to look at the sunset view, and heard the water oozing and sinking in a field nearby, which was rather unpleasant, but notable.
Nature is doing her thing now, and with every day, the veil of green and white spreads through the hedgerows and woods as new leaves are unfurled and cherry, plum, crab apple and quince blossom all open. Some orchards are also full of blossom, but most commercial apple varieties will be a bit later. it is the quince blossom I love the most - it is simple, but the flowers are large and generally tinged with pink.
At a distance, the wild cherry blossom is magnificent, but close to, the flowers are small and meagre, nothing to compare with the cultivated varieties, which have more and bigger flowers. But when you get a run of wild cherry down a hedge line, it is magnificent.
Irrespective of how we might feel about working in this weather, the kitchen garden plots need to be sorted out and planted up or any crops will be too small or too late to be of much use. I pulled up the matting that has been suppressing weeds on this year's potato bed, so that John could get the rotavator on to it, and met a small helper. They are very good at keeping slugs under control among other pests, so I am always pleased to see slow worms, and particularly baby ones. This one can't have been more than five inches long or so.
Less welcome visitors are the Asian Hornets, and for a number of years, I have been part of a local observatory group, that catches and records the numbers of Asian hornet queens captured in Baugé en Anjou, with the aim of reducing the damage they do to local and native insect life. It isn't only their predilection for eating the heads of honeybees like candy, they have also been found to reduce all insect life by 40% around their nests. In addition, they have a really nasty sting. Yesterday's warm weather had them out and looking for food, and my trap caught 3 of the brutes, and I am very happy about that.
Finally I managed to get the onion sets planted, while the shallots that went in a couple of weeks ago are now starting to show. I'm keeping my fingers crossed with the wet weather though. Back in Worcester, we couldn't really grow any alliums as onion white rot is endemic through the Vale of Evesham and into Worcester, and there is no real cure other than not growing any of the onion family for at least 5 years. I get very twitchy and hope that we can stay free of it!
During the week I moved the trail camera that had been in the One Acre Wood back to the Orchard, and put it where I got film of the water rail. The new and unsophisticated cameras don't use much battery power, so in theory I can now leave that one in place for the whole of the summer and will only run into problems if the memory card gets full. During the time it was in the Wood, the camera got 54 files, and when I reviewed them, they were all of John and/or I moving about the wood, nothing else. Given it was by a clearly used wildlife track, it was disappointing, as in 24 hours it captured 26 files of wildlife at the bottom of the Orchard.
But that is the wonder of our land in the country - the mix of habitats means it provides a marvellous corridor for things to move along, as well as the food sources and shelter for a huge range of birds and animals. My Merlin bird song app tells me that there is a skylark or two in the zone, and a nightingale has just arrived too. Very few of the bird species convincingly identified are considered particularly endangered (mostly in the Least Concern category), but it is the wealth of species and the density of the birdsong that tells me it is a rich area in the best sense of that term.
So I finish with a photo of some tulips that I bought cheap at a discount supermarket, planted late as I had other concerns, and that have rewarded me with a magnificent show of flowers that I hope will be repeated in future years.
Have a good week!
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