According to the best gardening manuals once flaming June has gone growth slows down in the garden. I think that in the light of global warming some serious re writing is required. Despite the lack of rain-and day before yesterdays showers did not register on my state of the art computerised Teutonic engineered weather gizmo-growth is accelerating like crazy.Jusat the other night Stan the Man painstakingly cleared the back yard of 325 assorted weeds, including sadly, some of the wife's favourite FoxGloves (at 11-30 at night S the M cannot easily distinguish between Dandylions and Fox Gloves with his heavy duty but headlightless strimmer) By the time I had got out of bed and paid him they were growing again. Not the Fox Gloves; they were not going to risk a second coming of S the M but the Dandylions and other small tough weeds were whistling up through the cracks in the asphalt. Today I will have to have another go just to be able to leave the back door and find my way to the other features of the side yard like the 87 compost bins and the banks of swaying nettles not to be touched because of the needs of the butterflies. While the wife was a way I had to use a machete to hack a path through the eye high nettles to find the lettuce beds and indeed to blaze a trail to the currently active compost bins. Machetes are now no no but the wife can manage ok even if my offer to lend her a GPS is curtly rejected.
Israeli settlers in arid parts of what was Palestine used to boast that they could grow two blades of grass where one grew before. Things have moved on in the Merse from those simple and satisfying pioneering days. Our front drive has 5 blades of grass where there was none before-like 30 minutes ago. However despite an overall messy appearance which would not do for Dulwich of Dalgety Bay I have a minimum intervention policy of removing as much grass as is necessary to find the car.
Fortunately the lawn(rather meadow) is the responsiblty of a young lady from the village earning pocket money on her vacations from St Andrews. She used to mow once a week but now it is every 4 days-and even throughout the winter we had to mow regularily otherwise we might have lost the garden and our wonderful view from the kitchen.
Never mind the bleeding ice bergs, we have melt down right here as having to water our pond regularily testifies. And the pond is now so globally warmed that the frogs spend all their time in the shade of the taller weeds. If theG8 had met in our sort of 'summer house' *I am sure there would have eeen a different outcome on climate change. Next time perhaps
* 'Sort of summer house' as the summers actually make it unhabitable because of the extreme heat. 'Winter house' has a strange ring to it but is actually more accurate.
