Pups in the Polytunnel

This week: Historical research; Pups in the polytunnel; Rain rain go away…; Leaking roof and other DiY;

I get up early in summer. Early means around dawn, so 04:30 here.

Thinking about that statement, I probably get up around dawn through out the year!

Dawn in summer is a magical time of the day here in Dol.

The air has a coolness about it. It is fresh, scented with pine, and at the moment with the fragrance of wild clematis too.

Under foot it is dry. There is little humidity, so there is no dew on the grass.

Walking up the old donkey track behind my home I had to duck repeatedly to avoid the threads of spiders webs across the path. I needed my stout stick to part weeds and spiny shrubs too.

Clearly no one else has been along these paths for some time.

I have been waiting for the North African high altitude dust to clear away, so the beautiful dawn colours will show. By the middle of the week, the atmosphere had cleared.

Usually I have just one or two of the felines with me, but on Friday I sneaked out alone.

This meant I could record the bird song, as the light levels rose and the world began to wake up again.

There were many Nightingales singing, the birds invisible in the trees, but their sound carried through the still air. I was able to make this recording of two Nightingales, but which also includes Blackbirds and a crow.

I was back at home in my study, enjoying a cup of coffee by 5am, and was joined shortly after by my neighbours Labrador who decided to invite himself for breakfast…

Historical research

The last ten days have been busy.

Yesterday was the publication date of the latest PMCC magazine (number 331) which I edit and there have been lots of edits and last minutes bits to put in.

Being born, brought up and going to school in York, I have always been saddened that no formal history of the York City Police has ever been written, despite its 132 year history.

Like so many of my colleagues, I think back to the material I could have and should have saved when I had the opportunity. However not being a trained historian, at the time it didn’t occurr to me.

The same with taking photographs. I have literally thousands which are waiting to be scanned; colour slides, 10×8 black and white prints, medium format negatives and cabinet cards more than 100 years old.

Today it is easy with digital devices to photograph anything and everything. When film was expensive, I took just one photographs. If I had had a digital camera, I would have taken so man, many more.

Currently I am trying to identify all the York City staff at the point of amalgamation in 1968. Sadly each year, those who were there are becoming fewer.

What I have been trying to find, to help with identifying people on photographs is some Anacapa chart software. I realised my head was spinning when I had one photograph of 30 officers, which generated 148 separate pieces of information from 38 people!

And there are still three on the photograph who I have yet to identify.

Despite a lot of research, I haven’t found the software I am looking for yet! Maybe the old way of a cork board and some string would be the answer….

Pups in the polytunnel

Before 10am, it is comfortable working in the polytunnel. By ten the sun is high and the temperature is around 30ºC and the working conditions become uncomfortable.

I have been harvesting fruits this week.

The snowberries I planted in the spring have started producing fruit.

There are not huge numbers of berries, because this is their first year. However there are enough to pick and enjoy.

The snowberry is a variety of Strawberry with completely white to pink tinged berries. They are sweet, full of flavour and very juicy. Although the berries are smaller than normal strawberry fruits.

I have been digging up the Convolvulus that has been coming through. This is a creeping weed which is difficult to eradicate, that climbs, twines and will throttle plants if given the chance.

Moving some of the growth away from my Banana tree, I was delighted to see that it has had Pups. The word “Pups” is the correct term for the offsets which Bananas throw up from their root ball.

Usually this happens just before a Banana fruits. The tree will produce a flower and fruit once in its life and then die, so the pups are the plan’s method of ensuring its survival.

I am disappointed with my tomato plants. Yes they are fruiting and yes they taste nice, but considering they have been inside the polytunnel, they are only fruiting at the same time as my neighbour’s who has grown them outside.

Another success is my attempt to grow a Flamboyant Tree, Delonix regia. I bought ten seeds and just a single one has germinated.

This tree is part of the Ceasalpinia family which also included the Honey Locust. There are some which are growing in Jelsa, so I thought I would try and grow one in my garden.

When they are in flower, they really are a talking point.

Rain rain go away…

Rain, rain go away,
Come again another day…..

So goes the old rhyme. This has been the wettest spring since I moved to Dol, with more than 200 litres per square metre above the average for the whole year.

Just this morning (Saturday) Dol caught the edge of a large thunderstorm and received another 18mm.

I am not complaining because we are usually so short of rain. But what it has done is to make the weeds and grasses last much longer than usual.

Walking along a path through the Maquis this week, I spotted another wild flower I have not seen before. This is one of my regular routes, which makes me wonder if it is the rain which has caused the variety of new plants I have seen this year.

The brilliant yellow colour of the flower immediately caught my eye, but also its unusual petals and shape.

The whole thing is in a single stem, with long strap-like fleshy leaves all the way up.

It stands about a metre tall and there are several in a group, just in one place.

The leaves are unusual and I wonder if it is some kind of flowering bulb, which only appears after prolonged rainfall?

If you just saw the leaves, you would ignore them as “just another weed”.

In the orchards I have a lot of Fennel. In fact it grows all over the place and quickly colonises abandoned land.

Cutting some down, which is growing too close to some fruit trees, I saw a caterpillar of one of our Swallowtail butterflies.

At 3cm long it is only partially grown, but as it continues to feed on the Fennel it will soon grow fat. I left the plant alone…

Leaking roof and other DiY

Admittedly, the rain on Saturday morning was coming down in “Stair rods”. That is not quite as heavy as described in the local saying when it “rains old women”.

But it is heavy enough to shop up prolems with my roofing.

I am still waiting for permission to build and join my main buildings together. In the interim, I built a temporary roof three years ago which has kept me dry when I move between the buildings.

However on Saturday there were streams of water running under the roofing sheet joints.

I built it as a very temporary structure, using local materials consisting of mainly 5 x 3 cm wooden lats. The summer heat, expansion and contraction, combined with their four metre lengths means that they are now bowing in the middle.

So the plastic roofing, instead of shedding the water, is now letting it pool.

The felines sitting and lying on the roofing sheets probably hasn’t helped.

But the result was a floor as wet as if there was no roof.

I really expected that I would have the permanent installation by now, but it is not to be. So I think I need to do a re-design, and replace the bowed timber with new sometime before the next winter.

My new staple gun was delivered this week.

There isn’t anything wrong with the old one, except that it is from the UK, and now I can no longer get the right size staples for it. Another of those Brexit dividends we keep hearing about!

It is all part of the same problem, because I don’t have my lounge between the buildings. So my bookcases are crammed in the dining room.

Throughout the year, as the sun traces its arc across the sky, the rays shine through the Velux roof lights and have begun to fade the books in the bookcases.

Earlier in the year, I bought material to make blinds to protect the books from UV light, but when I came to try and fix the material to a roller, I couldn’t.

This week, I sanded and rounded the ends of the wooden rollers and then stapled the material onto them.

I had to be careful to make sure the edge was absolutely straight, so the material would roll evenly.

Once finished, the makeshift blinds hang completely vertically and I now have the means to roll the blinds up and down.

it’s just another job done…… NCG