another sticky one

It has been another sticky day, with rumbles of thunder rolling away intermittently in the background.  Compared to places with a Continental climate where summers are truly sticky, I suppose this is nothing.  My parents spent a year living in Illinois when I was a baby, and my mother was shocked by the extravagant luxury of the air conditioning when they moved into their rented house, until it got to summer and she realised that air con was an extravagant necessity.  But things are decidedly sticky for north Essex, and we are not used to it.  The Systems Administrator came in from the workshop at about half past five saying it was no use, conditions were too humid for any of his resins to set.

That was quite convenient at one level, since what with the Test Match, the Grand Prix and the Tour de France, there is almost more sport available than there are hours in the day to watch it, and like the life of Tristan Shandy unfolding faster than he can chronicle it, the SA is in danger of being left behind.  It's just as well he is not a golf fan, since trying to follow the Open as well as everything else might be the straw that broke the camel's back.  My interest in sport is still limited to knowing to adopt a suitably sympathetic expression in response to passing comments like 'Cook's gone'.

Instead I have been making further progress with the piles of old magazines.  Advice on swarm control is being carefully saved, since this has to be one of my weakest areas in beekeeping.  I still don't understand how a bees' vision works, with its compound eyes, but frankly, I am happy not to. A number of recipes for cooking with honey have also emerged from among the heaps of paper, and those will go into my cookery folder.  I know that the honey snaps are delicious, because a friend handed round her entries for us to eat on the spot at the end of the honey show, and they would go capitally with ice cream.  A series of scrap paper with pencilled scribbles on went into the recycling pile, until I suddenly realised that they were the notes to my lovingly compiled slides on Gardening for Bees, and thought I'd better keep them.  I was happy with the way the presentation went when I did it, but that's not to say that in six months' time if I wanted to do it again, I'd be able to remember what thoughts went with each image.

Tomorrow is forecast to be fresher, so active life might resume.  Though we'll see.  The forecasts for the past couple of days have been no help at all, with rain arriving when it was supposed to be dry and holding off when it was supposed to be wet, and extra thunderstorms appearing out of nowhere.  The poor old chickens have missed out too, since neither of us felt like committing ourselves to guarding them.  Chickens caught in a thundery downpour will take refuge under the hedge, which leaves the chicken watcher sitting in the shelter of the porch in the rain, waiting for them to go to bed.