Life begins over again

This week: Life begins over again; Desperate measures;

Here we are again, another Saturday and with the 30th blog of 2025. The year is racing past at an incredible speed!

The day time temperatures have reached over 37°C more than once this week and I have had a fan running all night, just to keep air moving inside my home.

Even warm air feels cool, if it is moving!

The heat has dried out the soil in the polytunnel, to the extent that my small raised herb border, surrounded by wooden boards, had started to leak soil out from the bottom of the wood.

I have a large pile of old spare concrete roof tiles and I tried one to see if I put it against the wooden board, it would keep the soil in. It did.

I spent a couple of mornings digging out soil, riddling it to remove stones and then fitting old roof tiles, held in place by the stones.

It really was not possible to work past 11am, so what should have been just a one day job, has been spread over three morning’s work.

Now that everything is in place, I will plant out some parsley I have been growing.

The Broccoli I planted last week germinated in four to six days, just as the packet said. It will stay in the propagator for a while and I will add more at 2 weekly intervals.

Today, the 26th July is the Feast of St. Anne. Our little Church in the village is dedicated to St. Anne and she is the Patron Saint of the village.

We don’t have any large parade or celebration, rather people gather at neighbours and enjoy locally sourced food.

My next door neighbours are no exception, so I have been busy in the kitchen this morning, making a couple of dishes for the “pot luck” tea.’

First up was a Pavlova. This is a really easy dessert, made with eggs, (local free range of course) sugar and some lemon juice.

I will add cherries and plums from the orchard, which I saved and froze ready for today and of course topped off with whipped cream.

I’ve also made a typical vegetarian curry, based on a recipe from Kolkata. Using chickpeas, cauliflower and tomatoes, it is spiced with grated ginger, garlic, red onions, turmeric, garam masala, chilies and coconut milk. Just the thing for a hot day.

I also used some lemon grass from the polytunnel.

Although I should have made some Naan bread, I was very disappointed this week when an oven stone I had ordered, was delivered, broken into two.

I know there will be plenty of bread, so although I’m disappointed, it is not a complete disaster.

As soon as I have finished the blog, I’ll be away over to my neighbours….

Life begins over again

I was watering my peach trees last

Sunday morning when a butterfly floated past my face.

In this part of the orchard, there is no blossom or flowers left now, so I was a little surprised when it alighted on a the edge of a leaf on the Morello Cherry tree next to the peaches.

The butterfly was no more than 25 cm from me, so I had a clear view. Then I saw it bend its abdomen under the leaf for a second, before it flew off.

I suspected I had just witnessed it laying an egg.

Turning the leaf over, there was a single egg, planted on the underside.

This is a European Swallowtail butterfly, Papilio machaon, is one of our showy summer flyers, to be found every day on my nectar rich Lantana plants.

It has a large caterpillar, easily identified by the orange and black tiger stripes. It likes Fennel, that strong annice tasting herb, of which there is a lot growing wild in and around may orchards.

I will be looking out for the caterpillar, or rather the damage caused by the caterpillar which will lead me to where it is.

This is probably the second brood of the year. Swallowtails can have up to three in our long Mediterranean summers.

Desperate measures

Earlier in the year, I reported that I was concerned about my remaining Apricot tree.

Taking advice, I gave it a hard prune. However all the leaves have now turned brown and died.

Looking this week, the tree still has green cambium under the bark, so something is alive there and at the base there are three suckers which have obviously not died back.

I have been giving the tree eight to ten litres of water a day, to try and get it to pull through, but to no avail.

This week I decided I would cut the thick branches back close to the trunk.

This is in the hope that it will conserve energy and sprout new shoots next spring.

I have had a lot of very sweet Apricots from it, so I will be sad if it dies completely.

Once I cut everything back, I found that two branches have disease, perhaps some sort of canker.

The inside of the cut branches shows no sign of disease, the wood being perfectly white and it appears healthy.

I just do not know what is wrong with the tree, but I hope by taking some desperate measures, I can save it, above the graft, and that next spring it will start to grow again. NCG