I told the Systems Administrator that the boss seemed rather low since his holiday, and the word was that he hadn't caught many fish. The SA replied without missing a beat that he couldn't have had a large enough trawler. You can see why we haven't been accepted into the bosom of the County set, and spend our spare time hanging out with other retired City types, academics, and engineers.
I did a run to the dump first off, timing my trip to avoid arriving at the railway crossing gates at half past the hour, when they are liable to remain shut for up to ten minutes while several trains go through. I also managed to avoid the roadworks in our lane, but that was by luck rather than judgement. There are notices at both ends of the lane where it leaves the main road, announcing that the road ahead is closed, which is not very helpful if you live on it, or in our case off it. The closure is scheduled to last all week, while the council repairs the potholes, which is welcome as far as it goes. The works have started at one end, and the gang will presumably move down the lane, pothole by crumbling section of edge, until they finish at the other end. While the works are to the north of the farm road we can avoid them by using the southern junction, doglegging our way through the chicane at the end of the lane, then once the works pass our entrance we can switch to using the northern route. I suppose that there will be a brief point when they are mending the lane right outside the farm track when we can't get out at all. The difficulty is that there are no signs to tell residents how far the work has got, and which end of the lane they should use. I don't know what the lettuce lorries are doing, but presumably Dave the lettuce farmer is having to load up his crops from some other outpost of the lettuce empire.
Then it was time to inspect the bees. I had to do them today, since it is ten days since the last inspection, the absolute maximum interval to be theoretically sure of being able to prevent swarming. It was a rather hot and humid day to be opening them, since bees don't like high humidity and particularly don't like the smell of human sweat, but it had to be done. Tomorrow, apart from being too late, is forecast to be even hotter and more thundery. The bees were very good about being opened up, despite the beads of moisture running down my face, and showed no signs of swarming, which came as a relief. They haven't brought in much honey at all since the last inspection, but it has been too windy for them to fly for several days, and cold at times. Neither of the colonies I messed up trying to prevent swarming earlier in the season had eggs or brood yet. My hunch was that one probably had a young queen but the other possibly didn't, so I'll see in due course if my gut feel was right.
After the bees I planted out some more of my stash, though not all of it, and I did succumb yesterday and buy three plants of a particularly good blue form of Viola cornuta, one with very large flowers with a hint of grey in them, less purple than the ones I have already. I trimmed the lawn edges too, a task that can take as long as you let it, depending on how far back into the bed from the edge you range to weed as you pass with the shears. I do all the edges by hand, which is one reason why they are not done nearly as often as they should be and end up shaggy. I dislike the noise of strimmers, I can't start them, and they are too destructive to wildlife. Which said, I haven't seen any toads for weeks.
The army were banging away like anything on the ranges, the rattle of machine gun fire underpinned by the bass note of heavy artillery, some thuds so deep they made the house shake. Nearer to home, the lettuce farm has got some sort of new and peculiarly clattering machine. The SA believes it is a cultivator that chops up the remains of the old lettuces after harvest, so that they decompose faster when ploughed in. Neither of us have seen this postulated machine, so I can't say. Fortunately whatever it is doesn't run all day, every day. The volume of clattering is variable, which would fit with something being driven up and down, sometimes closer and sometimes further away.
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