Three tee-shirts every day
This week: Fire season; Three tee-shirts every day; Garden musings; Website security; Not what I expected;
We have had baking heat again, all this week.
For five consecutive days the temperature in my polytunnel has exceeded 50°C, peaking at 53.5°C one day early in the week.
As well as the inside temperature, the outside clear air temperature feel has been over 40°C from 10am until tea time.
This is just too seriously hot to do anything meaningful outside.
So much of my week has once again been spent on-line doing various jobs.
I don’t like dark mornings! I’m up around 05:00, but whereas in mid-summer, the sun has already risen (sunrise at 05:17), now in mid August, sunrise is after 06:00, so at 5.15 it is barely daylight.
This morning I was out watering some saplings when I heard the unmistakable call of Bee Eaters.
Against the pale grey of clouds, I was looking for them, however it took me a while to see them. When I did, there was a large flock, perhaps 75 to 100 birds, very high in the sky, just black dots against the clouds.
Clearly this was a migrating group heading south for the winter.
Just like our spring, which begins with the first bulbs flowering in December, so our extended autumn season starts with leaves dropping, because of the heat and lack of soil moisture, in August.
When one sees birds beginning their long migration to sub-Saharan Africa, you realise that they understand the seasons are moving on…
Fire season
Sitting in front of a window has both up and down sides. For example, as I write this, I can smell smoke.
It is our peak fire season, but also peak visitor season and I suspect it is someone lighting a BBQ, but you never know.
On last Sunday afternoon, I could see a band of grey smoke across the western sky, which apart from the band[, was our usual limpid summer blue.
A quick check of Flightradar.com and I could see the fire was in the hills north of Split near Klis and four Canadair water bombers were working the fire.
Using Flightradar it is easy to track the fire fighting aircraft. The Canadair’s cannot water bomb after dark.
On Monday morning there was the smell of smoke in the air and the Canadair’s had returned. There was also the report in the local newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija:
“On Sunday around 2:40 p.m., ŽVOC Split received a report of a fire in the area of Solin, district of Voljak. Firefighters from the operational area immediately went to the field, and four Canadair CL-415 firefighting aircraft came to their aid.
There were 135 firefighters with 45 fire trucks from 19 fire departments on the ground, and at 8 p.m. another 26 firefighters with nine vehicles came to help from Zagreb, (400 kilometres away).
Eddy Meštrović captured the incredible scenes of Canadians taking water in Kaštela Bay and published the video on his YouTube channel EdoStuff Aviation. A particularly fascinating moment is when the Canadair passes by the dinghy, and the man from the dinghy waves to the pilot, who waves back.”
Watch that moment in the video below.
I have my hoses laid out and charged ready, hoping nothing bad happens, but being ready for when it does………
Three tee-shirts every day
As I mentioned at the start, our weather remains hot. Very hot.
However it was only when I updated the weather statistics for the first two weeks of August, that I realised just how hot it has been.
For the past week the temperature “feel” has been around or over 40°C every day, from 10:00 to 18:00. Now I understand why it has been so unpleasant working outside.
In the polytunnel, the maximum daily temperature has been over 50°C. I am wearing three tee-shirts every day, because even performing little to no manual work, they quickly become soaked through with perspiration.
Little is growing in the Polytunnel, and I picked the last of my tomatoes this week.
Only when I came in, did I discover a nest of Whitespot Lady Birds, Sospita vigintiguttata, which were running all over my hand. I released them all outside.
The insect biome, even in the heat of the polytunnel, is healthy.
When I checked my weekly water usage, this week I have used over 1,700 litres and that is just to keep plants and trees alive.
There will be no Persimmons his year. They are shrivelling and dying on the tree.
I will have few citrus, despite the trees having been planted in 2017 or before, they are so stressed with the lack of rain, that the small oranges, lemons and mandarin are being aborted.
My table olives are small and shrivelled, as are olives in the groves around my home.
Just an occasional tree has olives which are plump and juicy. Just one variety of my table grapes have fruit which I will be able to pick.
The rest are shrivelled and just providing sugars for insects. I really should just cut the bunches off and put them on the compost.
Thunderstorms are forecast for Monday and Tuesday, however they are “pop-up storms”. These can be tracked easily on Blitzortung, but are very localised.
So if we are in the path of a storm, we can get a useful amount of precipitation. But based on my experience, the topography of the island keeps most storms away from Dol, and we see little or no rainfall.
Garden musings
All my grapes have failed this year. Some large, old vines are seriously stressed.
Whilst other vines have fruited, but then the grapes have failed to swell.
Some grapes resemble raisins on the stem.
Last year my Persimmon had so much fruit, one branch broke. That is not going to happen this year.
The fruits are drying up on the branch and are starting to resemble green prunes.
My Medlar tree is dying back and fruits are falling, and the soil under the sweet cherry trees resembles November, not August.
I have planned for a small ornimental pond for some years. I even have a number of aquatic plants and water lilies growing in 50 litre builders tubs.
For various reasons, I have not dug the pond, and the more I ponder the changing climate and water stress, the less inclined I am to actually start the work.
Updating my weather statistics up to 17th August, three graphs are important.
The 11 day average is important because academic studies show it is the temperature interval which affects plants and plant growth.
One hot or cold day will not affect plants. Several days will.
In this chart the yellow line on the graph is 2023, the blue is the 10 year average and the red line is for 2024.
Almost all of 2024 has been above both the 2023 temperatures and the long term average. We are now beginning to see some seasonal cooling, but it can still be hot until the end of August.
Sir Winston Churchill said there “are lies, dammed lies and statistics”. The second and third charts use exactly the same precipitation data for Dol, but presented in two different ways.
The first chart indicates that we are 200mm or 200 litres /m² above the 10 year average. I look at my dust-dry orchards and know something is not right.
The second chart is for precipitation in our summer dry period, from May to September. This shows that at week 30, we are below the average by some 10 mm or 10 litres /m².
Up to the start of June, the precipitation was progressive, then there was little until a pulse of rain in week 25 and then nothing again until the 6.6mm received at the start of August. That is why everything is dry!
Website security
I apologise for the problems with last week’s blog. It was all down to a security certificate having expired.
When trying to access the blog, readers would have seen various warning messages, depending on the device and browser you use.
Sadly in the times we live, there are bad actors who would like to steal your identity, steal your money or trick you into clicking on a link which takes you to a site which downloads viruses onto your device.
When the World Wide Web became popular, everyweb site started with four letters, “http”. Then in 1995 Netscape (remember them?) introduced a more secure protocol and http gained an “s”.
Today there are few website which do not use “https”, and browsers all alert users if a website appears insecure.
My website has no e-commerce, collects no personal data and doesn’t use “cookies”, but I have always had the security layer. That is until last week.
I write the blog, often drafting using notepad, using the most basic “no frills” ASCII text. Then I use content management software called WordPress, to turn my words into something nice for you, dear reader, to look at.
This is done on a server in the UK who “hosts” the blog and all the photos, text etc., and delivers it to your browser.
The company has recently been sold and the new owners immediately cut staff numbers, reduced technical support to a bare minimum and decided that instead of supplying a free security certificate, everyone would have to pay for one, regardless of their need.
I am a proud Yorkshireman, born and bred, and subscribe absolutely to the Yorkshireman’s Creed:
Ear all, see all, an say nowt.
Eat all, sup all, an pay nowt.
An, if iver tha duz owt fer nowt
do it fer thissen
On that basis I am not going to be ripped off, so although it has taken most of the week, I have installed a new certificate and got everything working again.
I now know a lot more about how the back end of the blog works, but it has taken a lot of time and effort…. But I got there in the end!!
Not what I expected
I often include photographs of my Alstromeria, the Peruvian lily, because they have such showy flowers.
This is the definition of “thriving”. I planted them as a small clump of the fleshy roots from a 10cm plant pot.
Four years on, they are taking over the flower bed. So while the soil is dry and they have died back for the summer, this week I have lifted and divided the clump in half.
Whilst other non-native “Mediterranean basin” plants at best “survive”, the Alstromeria thrive in the heat and dry, stony soil.
Last winter they flowerd without stopping from November.
They are easy to grow, but in areas which experience ground frost, they need to be brought inside for the winter.
After digging up the clump, there are way more than I expected. I wanted to plant several sets of tubers next to an Hibiscus which I planted this spring.
When I dislodged a stone from the wall, I was delighted to find a cocoon of a Giant Peacock moth, Saturnia pyri.
I had at least five caterpillars early in the summer, so now I know that at least one has pupated. I carefully replaced the stone.
Digging the hole for the roots in itself has taken a lot of effort. I needed a pick-axe to break into the clay loam. After more than 30 minutes with little progress I gave in.
This is around the bottom of a wall, where it should be at least damp. Nooooo! It is baked as hard as concrete, such that my largest digging fork was bending under the strain of trying to dig out clumps of grass.
With rain expected tonight and next week, I will let the soil soften before I try and plant them. The others I will keep cool and damp until I plant them in the autumn.
So while I am upset about the plants I have lost in this summer’s brutal heat, not everything is “doom and gloom”. NCG