Here we are in mid-July ! Nature is in full swing though I can certainly feel the season’s change since the solstice. Now I can finally draw breath on some fronts. Thank you for reading if you are here, I have been completely absent for a while, which I would have preferred not to be the case but May required 200% pure focus, digging deep and meeting various challenges and despite thinking I would bounce back immediately in June the month went in a blink and I obviously needed a bit more time to recover ! Though I do say it myself, I am usually a master at keeping several balls in the air at once, but this time, writing and even my knitting projects (pausing unheard of ) dropped by the wayside.
Knowing that the metaphorical marathon was complete the brain and body went a bit gaga and I just had to surrender to only managing to keep the main things going! It is a rare thing, especially at this time of year when everything is racing ahead and full of vitality. But an experience to be noted and appreciated. Letting go and allowing change, re-organising and recharging, seemingly more and more necessary these days, but then the longer you are off the wheel the harder it is to get back on!
Life marches forward so fast and I am drinking in this lovely Summer as much as possible creating inner reserves of sun energy to draw on in the Winter.
Although I managed to get salads started and tomatoes and courgettes (several times due to slug festas), herbs and various other things, it has been a challenge to say the least in this new garden that I am still getting acquainted with. Only the tomatoes and cucumbers have been growing a bit, everything else sitting in a sort of suspended adolescence, kept alive with watering. Tap water just isn’t what they like. Now that we are blessed with some rain I finally see growth. I find it the perfect example of why I don’t drink tap water where I can help it, preferring to pop to the nearest spring and fill my demijohns. I do feel blessed. I meet so many doing the same now and its always a cheerful encounter. More on water next week…..
The wild strawberries, raspberries and blueberries and wild cherries have been giving much joy and now the pears, plums and apples are starting to swell. It promises to be a fruity Autumn !
So the garden has mirrored myself, or I have mirrored the garden…..Productive with joyous floral abundance in May and June and showing promise of more to come and then suspended, waiting to feel refreshed deep down. In the last two weeks the insect life has proliferated, so many butterflies, moths, bees and wasps to name the obvious but also ladybirds in their hundreds, I believe their proliferation is countrywide and apparently the most since 1976. I must say what I don’t see so far are aphids ! The heat and the sun must have suited most of them, as it did me, nourishing and bringing an ease to life. We have a stream nearby and springs so they also had access to water, probably the perfect Summer right here, though I know that is not everyone’s experience. I remember well the heat of 1976, being hosed down while taking part in sports day at school, it being over 90 degrees in the shade etc but all my childhood summers seemed full of sunshine warmth and I also collected ladybirds regularly, fascinated by them, would study them for a while and then release them back into the garden.
Even a grass snake where I was working sort the coolness of the pond
So now that schools have finished and the rains have returned so have the slugs. I do wish grass was their favourite food and not veg. I try everything, barriers of egg shells, wool, thorny sticks, sand, cloches, sour dough water traps (similar to beer) - I see I have super slugs undeterred, in their thousands and perhaps because veg haven’t been grown here for a long while - super excited at the new cuisine. I think we need to have a chat or invite a load of frogs and toads. Hopefully next year we will find some balance.
Thank you for still being here if you are and have a wonderful week.