The unseasonably warm weather is very beautiful, but it does slow you down. I gave the bees some more sugar syrup, recharged the wasp traps, took a car load of rubbish to the dump, moved some empty pots into the shed, watered the pots with plants in and moved more of them into the greenhouse for the winter, and that was the day done. Doesn't sound like a full day's work.
It is a terrible year for wasps (or a highly successful one, from the wasp's point of view). They were hanging around the beehives in greater numbers than I've ever seen. I managed to squash four against the side of one hive. The extra trap I put out a couple of days ago, using the last of a pot of strawberry jam, hadn't caught any at all, so I strengthened the bait with a teaspoon of blackcurrant jelly left over from 2009. In fact it still seemed quite soft and jelly like, and not at all rubbery or crystallised, and it almost seemed a waste to use it, but I do have three drawers of a large iron filing cabinet full of homemade jam, some dating back to 2008, so must be able to spare a teaspoonful.
One of the full size colonies seems to be losing interest in sugar syrup, and still haven't emptied their last bucket, though hefting the hive it doesn't feel especially heavy. I hope they have sufficient stores in there, but I have to trust them to know what they're doing. The others are still hoovering the stuff down at an impressive rate. After making up too little syrup at a time all autumn, and finding I have to heat a second batch, I have finally over-compensated and now have a pudding basin of the stuff left over, tucked away in a corner of the kitchen with a plate over it. I ought to do some basic calculations, like measuring the capacity of the feeders, and discovering what the volume of 2lb sugar disolved in 1pint water is, then I would actually know how much syrup to make up, instead of relying on guesswork, a hazy memory of what I did last time, and the conviction that it wasn't enough.
The dump was busy. There's a lot of autumn garden tidying going on, to judge from the waste arriving this morning, and quite a lot of conscientious recycling, with bits of timber, metal and glass finding their way to the right skips. It is going to be such a nuisance if it shuts. I don't know if that decision has been taken yet.
The greenhouse is filling up. I think everything will fit in, as the dahlia pots will go under the staging, as soon as their tops have been blackened by the first frost and I've cut them down. Each year is a challenge to try and improve on last year, and not put pots in places where they block my view of other plants, which always ends in things being over or under-watered. I leave narrow tracks along the floor, like animal paths in a forest, so that I can reach all parts to water and weed. Part of me itches for a larger greenhouse, which is silly, since I don't have time to care for any more pots than I already have.
A useful job that didn't take long was to glue the broken halves of a couple of terracotta pots back together. I use Evo-stik impact adhesive, and while I wouldn't depend on the mended pots to stand outdoors all year round with permanent planting, they do well enough for summer displays, or in the shelter of the conservatory, as long as their occupant doesn't have too expansionist a root system to force the broken halves apart again. It is worth wiping the nozzle of the glue carefully after use before replacing the lid, as once I managed to glue the lid to the tube. That was the end of that tube of glue, as I utterly failed ever to get the lid off again.
The least good part of this beautiful day was Radio 3. This week's Sunday morning show was as painful as last week's Breakfast show. After listening to a (very crackly) pre-war recording of a Czech performance of Smetana's Blanik, followed by tumultous applause and the singing of the Czech national anthem, Rob Cowan read out a handful of listeners' e-mails and texts about it. I really wish he wouldn't (or rather, that the R3 bosses wouldn't make him. I can't believe he wants to.) One of the reasons why I have never joined a book club is that I am dourly convinced that discussions would be couched at the level of which characters in the book the other members of the group liked. Hearing how assorted random strangers felt listening to the Czech Philharmonic's rendition of Czech patriotic music as the Nazi menace tore across Europe is about equally dull. I was so disheartened I gave up with the radio until after lunch, and then settled for Classic FM as being much less cheesy than R3 trying to be Classic FM.
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