Morning all. our Beagle alarm went off at 6.00am, so I’m up, every window open to try and get the last of the cool air in to the house before the sun comes up and starts to hit the windows.

Ugh, I hate this weather with a passion, but it happens every year now, and not just once either. I think it’s time we stopped fighting it and accepted that 35 degrees plus is now normal. Even for May. We started talking yesterday seriously about getting some actual air conditioning units fitted, rather than just the portable one we currently have. We haven’t had to deploy it just yet because the new windows are helping, and the ease of being able to open all of them to vent the house also helps. When it’s 26 degrees still at 10pm, and it’s 24 degrees before 9am, the window of actual opportunity is short. I’ve got thermometers dotted all around the house and the living room is still 22.5 and now the sun is on the front window, so it’s already pretty much game over.

Last night was the night that pretty much every bit of agricultural kit in Creuse converges on the field in front of our house. I think this was driven by an impromptu thunderstorm warning for this afternoon, but choppers, threshers, conveyors, diggers and trailers appear in shifts for several hours and the meadow is efficiently cut, turned, piled and chopped into what I’m guessing is animal food for the winter months. Current view is an Everest of beautifully chopped meadow grass directly opposite the house. I’m guessing it’ll be moved very soon, before the weather hits later.

Our resident beagle, having never seen anything like this in all her born days, was absolutely transfixed, and took to yelling at everyone from the front yard for most of the evening, until she collapsed, completely exhausted, at about 10.30pm. I sat with her on my knee and we watched them work, and that was the only thing that seemed to calm her. Anything unknown or weird to her just manifests as shrill beagle screaming. Obviously the loud noises are a factor for her, but we don’t know exactly what is triggering for her, is she alarmed, is she excited, is she trying to tell us, quick, come and see, you’ll never believe this. We have no clue. She can however hear her own bark echo back a couple of seconds later because we live in a kind of natural basin, so, she basically argues with herself. Most amusingly for me, one of the bits of heavy machinery had a horn that played Baby Shark, and the theme music from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I am loving it. Massive child that I am.

The poly tunnel is enjoying the much needed heat and sun though, my pea plants had started to yellow due to too much water, but they are rallying now. We’ve had a few harvests of spinach and our first cucumber which is most welcome. Garlic is looking absolutely stellar. It’s been a few years since I’ve grown anything vegetable wise since the great cherry tree falling & menopausal dizziness of 2023, and I cannot wait to dry and plait the garlic, it might be my favourite garden job of all time. Theres something about the deeply summery savoury smell of the garlic as it cures that I just love. It doesn’t smell garlicky, it just smells really delicious. This is by far the largest amount i’ve ever grown, but it keeps so well and we use tonnes of it. I get a bit carried away with roasting whole heads of garlic and adding them to whatever I can get my hands on. Mashing them into mayonnaise and applying it to any sandwich, is always A+. I’ve tried really hard to not grow things for the sake of it, and to grow things we like and will eat, and I hope will keep well. Plus, this year is a bit of an experiment with the new raised beds, to see how well the lasagne beds work in practise, and to really get my compost making game back into gear. Any produce we get this year will be a bonus, next year we plan to add another 4 raised beds and maximise our space. I suspect we’ll still be laying bark chips for the next decade, but it is what it is.

The perennial bed is filling out really beautifully. Trying to move more to prairie style planting (because of the increasingly hot summers), and always planting with pollinators, birds, and small animal habitats in mind. I love this style of planting, grasses, echinacea, Russian sage, bee balm and gaura, thistles and verbena. I need some areas of the garden to look after themselves essentially, these will come back every year and should need minimal interference from me. I also try to balance this with having a readily available amount of cut flowers for the summer. My beloved dahlias desperately needed the sun, so I’ve planted out about 3/4 of them, the stragglers are having a bit of poly tunnel time before I pop them in too. I’ve direct sown some pots on the front steps with a mixture of whatever flower seeds I had kicking around, some of which are well expired. I’ll see what manifests, but I started to see sunflowers poking through this morning after just a few days. If nothing else comes to join them in a week or so, I might sow something else.

Despite the heat, I do like this time of year. You move into maintenance phase. It’s grass cutting, strimming, watering and weeding. The early morning cup of tea and a wander in your pyjamas is a joy. The late night watering as the sun goes down, refilling saucers and bowls and fountains for the birds. Popping rocks into the deeper vessels so you don’t accidentally trap a lizard or a wayward beetle. Spraying the sedums with water, each leaf trapping a little shimmering droplet that makes for a great hydration station for thirsty bees.

Despite having never seen a squirrel in our garden ever, a red squirrel lolloped through the front garden this week. I’m thrilled by this and have obviously named him Nutkin.

Stay hydrated everyone, and take your antihistamines.

TTFN,

V x