Kids being obstreperous!

This week: Stopping leaks; The kids are being obstreperous this morning!; Making my bed;

At long last, the heat dome has given way to more normal summer temperatures here in Dol. So instead of 37°C, we are now around just 30°C, a much more comfortable temperature.

We also had some much needed rain overnight on Tuesday into Wednesday, although sadly not enough. But then when everything is so dry, nothing is really going to be enough at the moment.

The rain brought the Zephyranthes carinata, the Rain Lily, into bloom.

At the other end of the scale, the recent heat has triggered the start of the autumnal colours on some of my grape vines. This is a month earlier than in previous years.

At the start of the week I was asked by a retired colleague to help with a project. He is trying to record the police boxes and pillars installed by the Plymouth City Police.

No problem, except I have never visited the city. Plymouth, on the far south coast on England, is at the extreme western tip of Devon. The city is another of those places which you “go to”, not “go through”.

So most of my free time this week has been spent in looking at online resources, large scale maps, the British Newspaper Archive and locating and researching old photographs.

I’m not quite there yet, but there will be another Monograph in due course…

After writing about my confliction last week over what to do with trees and shrubs which are dying in the heat, I mused on the Mediterranean Gardens FB Group.

There was one really useful comment from a lady in Spain. This was to use shade netting over the top of the trees which are suffering.

I have used wire hoops over the citrus so I can hang wind protection around them in case of a severe winter Bura – the biterly cold northern wind. So I already have a frame around them.

However I had not considered putting sun-shade protection over them. So I have a partial solution already in place – the steel frame.

After the rain on Tuesday/Wednesday, I went down to Volat first thing on Wednesday morning. I came back with twelve 2m x2m square pieces of thick, UV resistant shade netting.

I spent the rest of Wednesday installing an individual piece of “Sombrero” shade netting over each of my citrus trees.

Other trees, for example the apricots and cherries, are too tall and don’t have any framework. So for now it is just protection around some of the fruit trees.

This of course means that whilst I am still irrigating everything, every day, the thick netting would at least protect the trees from the scorching heat.   And at the same time, prevent some moisture evaporation too.

Stopping leaks

I started this week in my workshop.

Earlier in the year and after a torrential downpour, I had rain water and mud seeping into my workshop. This was coming from outside of the side door to my workshop.

The problem is that there is an earth bank and an old fig tree outside, which once waterlogged, just allowed excess rainfall to build up and seep inside. There wasn’t much, but just enought to make some small puddles inside.

I’m looking at digging out around the door, where the soil is level. This will create a sump, but I also decided to put a physical barrier in place as well.

I have used a 90 cm x 4 cm piece of wood, stuck down to the concrete with silicone,. I made sure that the barrier is higher than the underside of the door.

With thunderstorms possible this week, I decided I would get ahead of the curve!

However I was disappointed on Wednesday morning when I found there had been a tiny bit of water that had come under the door.

I suspect what has happened is that drips from the flat roof above – there is no guttering over the door way – have blown in. Certainly, the rainfall was not over the height of the dam I installed.

Once again, with no more rainfall on the horizon for the next two weeks, I have time to fabricate a “drip strip” to fit above the door and perhaps to dig out some of the soil which is against the doorstep, so there is a soak-away outside.

The kids are being obstreperous this morning!

I mentioned in my blog on the 5th April that I had seen a pair of Eurasian Kestrel Hawks pairing in the skies above my home.

Throughout the spring I have watched and heard the pair flying around my home. Often one or both would sit on the top of a tall funerial Cyprus, slightly up the hill, above my Dol house.

Then I found that they were using a hole in an old Alepo Pine a little way up the hillside behind my home, to build a nest.

The Eurasian Kestrel is a year round resident and the pair have been my constant companions in the skies this spring whenever I have been working outside.

I was certain that the female was sitting on eggs because I have seen the male bringing her food.

Robert Fuller, a wildlife film maker from Great Givendale in East Yorkshire has made several documentaries about the life of the Common kestrel.

This is a short one, but the full length versions are worth the time and effort to watch if you are interested.

This week there was a huge commotion around my home, with a lot of Kestrels calling and I was sure that it was the young screaming at their parents who were both flying.

However the birds were hidden in the branches of the Alepo pine, so I could only hear them.

Then on thursday I was aware of more screetching, but this time I could see the youngsters taking short, circular flights, returing to their perch on a dead pine branch. There were four of them, so four young have successfully fledged.

Female Kestrels are large than males, but otherwise cannot be told apart, so from the photographs, I can’t tell what sex the youngsters are. One is clearly smaller than the others, but he/she may just be the last egg to be laid and hatched.

Throughout the day there was raucous calling and short flights, together with some sibling squabbling as the parents brought food. Then on Friday morning it was all quiet.

Every so often I heard and saw one of the parents as they flew over and I wondered what had happened to the youngsters.

I needn’t have worried, because at tea time the youngsters were all back again, sitting on different brances in a pine, still shouting for food!

It is so nice to see our avian friends having a successful breeding season.

Making my bed

With cooler weather this week, I decided to do some manual labour outside and began digging out the border outside the kitchen window.

Based on its size, there was around a half cubic metre of soil to dig out.

When I bought my Dol house, there were already spring bulbs which had been planted. Over time I have added to these, until it had become a mish-mash of plants.

There was the problem of the dead grape vine which needed digging out and a date palm which I planted as a stone in 2018, which I wanted to keep.

All the soil was riddled into the largest tubs I have. From the riddle, I saved and sorted the flowering bulbs and disgarded the stones, large and small.

In all I removed three buckets of stones, glass and rubbish.

Once I had the root bowl of the grape vine uncovered, I could dig and pull the largest roots out.

Several broke into pieces, as the wood has rotted.

At the back of the bed, there was a large, flat slab which was holding the soil back. However this had been pushed out of place by the vine roots.

I removed it completely, dug everything out and then re-seated the stone, fixing it back in place.

There was also a large clump of wild Asparagus which I wanted to save too.

With all the bulbs dug out and saved and the soil riddled, I added chicken manure as a base, before I started backfilling with soil.

I am going to store all the bulbs until the autumn, when I will replant them.

Between now and then, I need to work on a plan because there are the bulbs of everything from the diminuitive Crocus to the 1 metre tall Dragon Arum.

There is also one small area of the bed, which is currently behind a healthy grape vine, that I need to dig out and clear.

Until the vine dies back in the autumn, I don’t want to cut any of the healthy leaders which are providing food for the plant.  

Until I can cut them, I can’t get in there to do any work.

These are just some more jobs I will add to my every growing list! NCG