We have ‘July drop’. This is not a disease, thank goodness, but something perfectly harmless that happens to apples each year. Little apples, which have not developed fully, fall to the ground. It is nature’s way of thinning the fruit naturally. Ours have been dropping for some weeks now, but this year we had frosts late in the spring and so the fruit is not too plentiful. I am hoping the drop stops soon. We are relying on our apples especially at this time when we are trying to be self-sufficient in vegetables and fruit. Two baby sparrows had July drop here too. They fell from their nest, somehow, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was a bird of prey that they were trying to escape from or the wind that broke up their flimsy nest structure. In any case, I heard their parents chirping from the trees and the nestlings soon toddled off into the nearby long grass. The ‘common’ house sparrow is not now so common, in fact it is on the RSPB red list which means that there is cause for concer
I know that you might think that living in the country we do not get to see people very much. And it is true that I cannot walk out of my door and have a natter with a next door neighbour and I can’t just pop in to a cafe and catch up with friends who happen to be there. But you would be surprised how often I do meet up with friends – it’s just that you have to make more of an effort and it all has to be arranged and planned and when we do meet – we never stop taking – you see there is so much to say after only having our pets for company. Well, anyway, I am trying to tell you about what happened last night. Now the nights are drawing in we all agreed to meet up for an evening meal in our nearest town to cheer ourselves up. I offered to pick up a friend in a nearby village and drive to the nearest town miles away. What a good time we had catching up on news and ... well, just talking to a person and not a cat or bees or the like. But at the end of the evening I was dismayed to find tha
I don’t know about you but I have not seen much of the sun this summer. Even so, the sunflowers are putting on a brave show trying to cheer us up on these grey days. They are so very bright with big nodding heads as yellow as yellow can be, struggling to reach the clouds. (Note the grey sky) I have always wanted to grow the tallest sunflower. You know there are always competitions in programmes like Gardeners’ World or Countryfile and schools are always encouraging the pupils to try in their own competitions. But I would never win - mine have always been about average - a measly five feet or so. According to the Guinness Book of records I would have to grow one over 25 feet 5.4 inches high to win the tallest in the world competition and 14 feet 7 inches to beat the British record - so just like this summer's weather, I have failed. This year autumn has arrived in August and all chances of my growing the tallest sunflower have ended. Everything seems to have stopped gr
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