A very brief visit today to pick some tomatoes and aubergines and courgettes (still a few small ones). Also three remaining melons as the plants have died back.
A mug full of raspberries for tea, plus some runner and french beans (enough for two or three meals)
Rained yesterday so didn't get here except briefly in the morning
Watching cabbage white butterfies pairing in mid air - fluttering around each other rising higher and higher then coming together wings still and freefalling briefly till they split and flutter and climb up to do it again.
Sunny cloudy day, tiding and picking and harvesting and mowing. Various windfalls and updated layout of tree areas in notebook - needs transcribing to map here.
Planted the new Almelanchier between the existing one and the Crab Apples
Planted 13 more strawberry runners - Cambridge Favourite variety - a row of 8 and one of 5
Watered tunnel and collected mowings. Picked pears (Beth) and some apples.
A lovely sunny morning mowing in the apple orchard. Saw a butterfly with orange front wings with black spots and brown tips and brown rear wings with an orange flame along the edge. Just looked it up its a small copper.
At a Pig's Snout for lunch and its lovely. Will pick a couple more to take home.
Both yesterday and today whilst mowing I have disturbed tiny little red-brown toads. Yesterday's was about 1.5" long with legs extended, today's was smaller at about an inch. I only see them when I catch sight of a movement in the fresh windrow - goodness knows how many I might have sliced along the way, none that I am aware of. They jump away into the mown grass cuttings seeking shelter.
Last time I wrote I was busy processing plums. Well that continued for another week with the rain returning and swelling the second laden tree's fruit causing some of it to split and let the wasps in. What with that and finishing off the first tree (about 28lbs+ in total I estimate) I only got about half off the second tree - approx 12lbs. But we now have eaten a lot of plums, invested a fair few in the gift economy, and have jars of plum jam, plum cheese, plum chutney and bottled plums and a batch of wine on the go. Still eating some today.
Typing the date I realise it is the so-called 'glorious' twelfth' when we remember the ecological and human deserts that are created by absentee land "owners" so that rich gits can kill things with guns.
Haven't seen any grouse or pheasant at Gwel Dulas, although there is some indication of small deer browsing the lower leaves of saplings.
This week I have been mostly processing plums. Also the tail end of the blackcurrants and the first of the raspberries which are now coming in faster than the birds and flies can eat them. Plum jam (two batches), plum wine, plum chutney, plum cheese, plum tart and, of course, lots of plum eating.
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