Lemon is no balm
This week: View from my kitchen window; Lemon is no balm;
The weather this week has been perfect for working outside in the orchards.
It has been sunny but with some cloud and not too hot. Our Tiger Mosquito invasive species has not been biting, apart from one bite, and together with the warm but pleasant weather I have been able to really attack the weeds.
Dol caught the edge of a thunderstorm on Friday which brought some needed rain, so I have not needed to do much irrigating during the week.
The sun was shining through the rain, but I didn’t manage to catch a sight of a rainbow.
The couriers have been twice this week. The first delivery was the rust treatment paint for the swing seat on my patio.
Then on Friday Global Express brought the ENOX nuts, bolts and washers that I ordered to replace the mild steel bolts on the swing seat.
This of course means that I now have no excuse for not cleaning the corrosion off and treating the seat. I’ll probably make a start on it next week.
With the unsettled weather on Thursday I did some more scanning of old photographs. I had a request early in the week for a photo of a colleague who sadly was killed in a road crash 20 years ago.
I knew I had one “somewhere”, all I had to do was find it. After going through a few boxes, I did indeed find the errant photo so even a damp day is not wasted.
This week I have also fitted the new water filter system under the kitchen sink.
Our water is completely drinkable, as all water is in Europe, but it has a massive amount of dissolved minerals in it.
There is no flowing water on the island and our mains water comes via an undersea pipeline from the mainland. The whole of Dalmatia and the majority of the country has a limestone bedrock.
The mainland receives a decent amount of precipitation and this falls onto the land, ending up in rivers from where the drinking water is withdrawn.
Our water is very, very hard which leaves calcium deposits on every surface where water drops land. Anything which heats water, like kettles, fur up very quickly so a means of removing as much of the dissolved minerals as possible is an advantage.
I purchased a 7 filter system when I lived in Abu Dhabi and installed it when I moved here.
The system is large and included an 8 litre pressure vessel so that even without power, there is water available. The pump failed at the end of last year and I have been unable to source a replacement. I suppose that 14 years of use is not too bad.
However it is a shame that the whole system now need replacement, for the sake of a new pump.
I ordered a replacement 6 filter system, which does not have a reserve vessel or a pump. Instead it just works on water pressure.
Our pressure out of the tap is around 7 BAR, so there is plenty of pressure to make the filters operate. After installation, everything is now working well.
View from my kitchen window
My kitchen faces east, so I get early sunshine every morning throughout the year.
The time varies this happens varies from when the sun climbs above the hills around 08:45 in mid winter, to this time of year when it is 05:45.
Outside the window I have two flower beds, one in front and one along side.
Alongside the window I have planted a Lantana Camara, the Mediterranean equivalent of the Budleija, the “Butterfly bush”.
Lantana’s have showy, bright and colourful flowers which bloom from March to November, but at this time of year they look stunning. This one is a pink and yellow variety, but I also have an orange and red and a cream and yellow flowered variety.
At the moment it is covered with butterflies, insects and pollinators, all enjoying the abundant nectar in the flowers.
Lantana are native to Central America but have established themselves across the Mediterranean, where we have similar conditions.
They readily grow into large shrubs and need to be pruned ever winter. This example has started to grow across the windows, so I decided to give it a haircut.
I fixed some plant stays to the wall and then clipped some of the branches to them. However there were still several branches overhanging the window, so I cut these back to a leaf shoot on each branch.
The result is a big improvement. Next job is to build the seat which will fit under the kitchen window…
However this has led me on to another question to ponder.
I weeded the flower bed and removed the dead bulb leaves. I noticed some time ago that because the soil is level with the top of the wall, when we get heavy rain, soil is washed out of the bed and down the wall into the gutter.
Also an old grape vine (diagonal trunk at the back of the photo) has died. It has looked unhappy for a couple of years but has finally succumbed.
So with coffee in hand I was contemplating what to do.
There are still some summer bulbs growing but I am thinking that perhaps now is the time to dig all the bulbs out, then lower the soil height before replacing the bulbs and plants. Then I will order a dessert grape to replace the dead vine.
With a lower soil level, moisture will be kept in the bed rather than being lost over the wall. So it is just another job to add to my list.
I just need the tall Madonna Lilies to die back before I start…
Lemon is no balm
I have two fairly consistent battles with plants around my home. They are at opposite ends of a very long “Barge pole”!
One is that I struggle to get some plants and seedlings to grow.
This is for many different reasons, my local Tigers being just one.
Having got some Flamboyant Tree, Delonix Regia, growing from seed two years ago, both saplings which were approaching 1 metre tall, have died over the winter.
They were in the polytunnel so I am not sure why they have not survived.
Some seeds germinate well but don’t develop into healthy plants. Here in Dol there is a fairly short ideal temperature window for growing seeds. Even using my propagator, because by about this time of year, the sun is so fierce, that plants are quickly desiccated.
At the other end of the scale are plants which I cannot prevent from reproducing. Weeds immediately come to mind but there are also “nice” plants which just expand exponentially.
One of these is Lemon Balm, a woody perennial shrub which is endemic to the Mediterranean basin.
This plant for me is a borderline weed. There are many definitions of “weed” but one I like is ‘Right plant, wrong place’. Another definition which definitely applies here in Dol is that when you pull everything up, what ever grows again is a weed. I subscribe to that.
Lemon Balm Melissa officinalis, flowers in June and produces copious amounts of tiny seeds, which are spread far and wide and readily grow. It has lemon scented leaves which have culinary uses.
This week I was in the Drupe orchard and saw that I had a big patch of self seeded Lemon Balm was growing around a couple of Pear trees. They weren’t there last time I looked, but they are now more than a metre tall.
When I took a close look, my eye was caught by some sudden movement. Standing still I saw that a young Katydid was moving around on the plant.
These are Roesel’s Bush Cricket, Metrioptera roeselii, but as I looked at the bush I started to count them. They were all over and I counted more than 15.
These are second or third instar nymphs, being a bit bigger than your thumb nail.
Nymphs are the juvenile form of insects and usually closely resemble the adult in colours and markings. They go through five or six stages or “instars” from hatching out of the egg to becoming an adult.
I have many different species of Katydid, large and small, around my garden and orchards. However I have never seen so many of one kind, in one place before.
As the Lemon Balm is not at the flowering stage yet and clearly these insects are resident and I presume feeding on the plant, I decided to let it grow where it is and to wait until it flowers before doing any cutting. NCG