picky starlings, a tidy conservatory, and a drought

I'm relieved to see that Blogspot have found my two missing postings.  I didn't think they could really have mislaid them permanently, although if they had I wouldn't have had strong grounds for complaint, given that they host Cardunculus entirely free and gratis.  The Systems Administrator explained that this was because the marginal cost of hosting extra blogs was practically zero, and a proportion of them would turn out to be commercial and bring in advertising revenue.

The starlings are raising their babies successfully so far in the roof at the front of the house.  I can hear them squeaking for food.  However, they have completely ignored the three purpose-built starling boxes that we put up for them at the end of the house, when we blocked the hole in the soffit board by our bedroom.  Starling nest boxes are very deep, with the hole high up in the box, and look perfectly acceptable to me, but then I am not a starling.  Maybe they don't like being on a north facing wall, but I would have thought the fifteen centimetre deep space in our west facing roof was liable to get fatally hot in warm weather.  There was one July, around the time of the Hampton Court flower show, when they were on their second brood and the squeaking stopped very abruptly, with no sign of the young family going for formation flying lessons around the garden, as usually happens.  Anyway, they know their own business best, and we know ours, and they can't live over the bedroom, due to noise nuisance.

I am on the home straight tidying the conservatory.  Pulling dead leaves and cobwebs out of the agaves I sustained minor flesh wounds for my trouble.  The leaves of agaves are very fibrous, whereas aloes aren't, hence you can keep Aloe vera on your kitchen window sill and break a leaf off to dab on yourself should you burn yourself while cooking.  A friend swears by it, though I am of the five minutes under a cold tap school of thought.  I dislike washing the conservatory glass so much, it reminds me why I have lived in this house for nearly eighteen years and still not yet washed most of the windows, ever.  The conservatory is beginning to look good though, with a proper circulation route through it, and it is possible to sit down without plants jostling in our ears.

I didn't water the quince tree enough, and it has dropped its small fruit, as it did last year.  I don't think I have it in a good spot.  The cherries are still on the tree, and I gave that a soaking.  The five day weather forecast for Colchester, that was for heavy overnight rain and two days of light rain, now shows no rain at all.  The farmers are irrigating at all hours.  I remember learning at Writtle that overhead irrigation in the middle of the day if it was sunny and windy was incredibly wasteful of water, because a high proportion of it would evaporate before it soaked into the ground.  Received gardening wisdom is to avoid watering when it is sunny to avoid sun scorch.  The farmers are just chucking on water, 24/7.