The girls are have made another baby queen cell again.  And again, as destroyer, I tore it down.  It is a risk but I have the defensive argument that I am a beginner and am therefore allowed to make mistakes.  If it happens again then I will have to do something drastic and try and trick them into thinking they have swarmed.

This is summer and we were reminded of it with a shock of perception.  After hours spent in casualty (another story entirely) we walked out into the night expecting darkness.  Instead we found daylight and rabbits hopping about at half ten in the evening.  Solstice must be nearby and we are reminded of the strangeness of latitude.

It is not a real summer as we have jobs to do around the garden and we cover ourselves head to toe in waterproofing to venture out into the drizzle.  The greenhouse and the staking of the tomatoes is a welcome break from the rain.   The unruly tomatoes are well overdue their additional support and they strain and creak as I force them upright and constricted by twine.

tomatoe plants wrangled into rows

The chickens think they are ducks as I move and restock their home.  They run about and excite themselves unnecessarily in the downpour; drunk on their stupidity and oblivious to the deluge.

The blackcurrants are scaring us.  they are a mixture of varieties and some of them are very ripe with a heavy crop.  We have no time at the moment to be thinking about harvesting them and processing them.  We fear that time, and the birds, may not be on our side.  The idea of freezing them is aired and then dismissed as academic as our modest freezer is bulging with fish and hundreds of homemade baby meals.

some foxgloves missed the lovely Sharon’s cull of ‘weeds’

We graze on the blackcurrants as we work in the hope that they will be healthy and help us fight of damp colds and rainy blues.