General news

Firstly apologies that the blog has dried up recently. I have been working almost full time hours for the last 3 weeks and by the time I have done all the usual day to day jobs at home I seem to be very lacking in mental or physical energy and Simon is often using the computer in evenings. This week I am only working 1 day (tomorrow) but we have had several gloriously hot and sunny days so I had to make the most of them and be outside as much as possible. It is dull and drizzly today. Last week I thought winter had started as we had sleet and hail storms and a touch of frost some nights (we even put our heating on a few times!).

It has just started pouring with rain - absolutely torrential, which I am happy about for a number of reasons:-
1 It makes doing the housework and ironing seem much more attractive than on a sunny day.
2 It will wash the accumulated salt off the windows and save mme having to wash them.
3 The garden will benefit from a good soak.

On Saturday I planted out some forget me nots and a few surviving wallflower plants. I have also this week been digging weeds out of the lawn, a few docks and dandelions but mostly hawkweeds. There are 2 different kinds of hawkweed here. The orange hawkweed was introduced, is quite small with pretty orange flowers and there are a few of them in the lawn. The native Antartic hawkweed has yellow flowers and can grow much bigger.
This photo was taken in the memorial wood a few minutes walk from our house.
The tough rosette of leaves of some of them is as big as a large dinner plate and quite hard to mow over. They have a long tap root (up to 18") but if you loosen them with a fork you can often pull it out (much easier than dandelions). So far I have dug out 13 large sacks full and taken to the tip but there are still a lot left. I plan to leave the areas where there are lots of small ones and just dig out the big ones. This activity combined with having dug out most of the protruding rocks and stones means that the lawn now looks as if an energetic family of pigs or badgers has been let loose on it so some rain to help the grass re-establish will be good. Hopefully the end result will be that it will be relatively easy to cut the grass with a lawnmower rather than the strimmer which is very slow and tiring.

The earwigs are continuing to prove a major frustration. I sowed some seeds in the other half of the polytunnel. Some rocket and land cress have come up and are largely surviving but pak-choi, spinach and chard have all come and gone. Presumably the pests don't like spicy leaves!