Finally bugs are behind me for the moment and I can look more positively at the coming weeks and think about what needs doing. Last week we dug up the very last potatoes from the 2024 crop - a bit sprouted but eating nicely! The potato bed is now getting ready for other, more interesting crops, having received most of the 400 kilos of top quality compost. The first strip has been sown (too late in my view, but nothing I can do) with broad beans, with wire cages over the top to defend the seed bed from cat bottoms. The next block will have onions and shallots when I am a bit more convinced about the weather, while the final block should have the aubergines, chillies and courgettes, assuming I get round to sourcing plants or sowing my own.
On Friday I picked up what I thought would be refurbished Asian hornet traps, but turned out to be brand new ones, with my old trap numbers painted on them. They will go out in the next couple of days, as I have seen a bumble bee, so things are starting to stir in insect world. The plum blossom on the mirabelle style trees is starting to look very close to exploding so that will attract other things, and therefore also overwintered Asian hornet queens looking for nourishment.
The fog is less omnipresent at the moment and that means we are getting more interesting sunsets of an evening. It is also lovely that those sunsets are ever later into the evening - just 4 weeks now until the clocks go forward, although the mornings are still too dark to be inspiring.
In theory this is the last weekend of the big game hunting season - I'm sure they will find a good reason to carry on but Sunday walks may be safer from next weekend onwards! Looking around the plot, there is evidence of a lot of animals on the move, and I've just scanned through some trail camera footage which shows that nothing has stopped the wild boar in their inexorable fight to conquer the French countryside, as a group of 15 passed through! For today you will have to do with print evidence though.
This week I had to resort to ordering a load of t-shirts - we've not indulged for perhaps 5 years and it is showing, so I gave in to cheap fashion and ordered 7 (3 for me, 4 for John). Home delivery didn't seem to be possible without a huge additional cost, while leaving the parcel at a local shop didn't seem to be an option any more - I had to choose between three different ranges of deposit boxes. Now I have to say it all worked really nicely and from placing the order on Wednesday, it was pretty amazing to collect the goods on Friday, but... I liked going to a shop to pick up the parcel, sometimes I was tempted to buy something from them too, and certainly they got paid a bit for being the deposit point. So while these boxes work very nicely, I think I preferred the human touch!
Now I need to go and watch the last half hour of an exciting rugby match! Have a good week!
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