Plum harvest begins

I know I've been saying this for weeks but maybe finally Summer has officially arrived; certainly that nightclub next to our favourite restaurant thinks so as it disturbed me both Friday and Saturday nights last week, prompted telephone calls to the police to complain. Not ideal. Anyway that's life and we get on with it; everything else is just wonderful.

That storm disappears past us

Later the same evening a big storm in the distance

Thirty degrees in the shade - lovely

Rambo in the cool of the porch

A chillaxing with a beer on the balcony

The weather has settled into a bit of a routine over the past week. It's been glorious in the mornings and then cloudy in the afternoons and on Thursday last week that cloud went all the way into quite an impressive storm which actually rained on us. That's the last time we've had any significant precipitation however. It's currently very warm, up above 30 in the shade, and the forecast is for hotter weather over the weekend before it cools down some for my parents' arrival next week. We've opened up the entrance hall again for Rambo to sit in, now the swallows aren't being quite so determined to nest in there, and he's appreciated getting into the cool. A chose a slightly different method of cooling down, taking a chill on the balcony with a glass of beer and her book; it's not a bad way to spend some time at all.

Scraping off the stupid shipping labels

The bang before this was huge and shook the building

Rollerblading in the house

Louise takes a ride

Thelma is less than impressed

Finally back on solid ground again, and happy about it

Beautiful balcony view

The sun goes down on another lovely day

It was another busy week for me, workwise, though I took my chances to get away from my desk when I could. On Friday A was cleaning up the display cabinet I'd bought for my model boats to go in and I sat on the sofa in the upstairs corridor and threw a ball for Thelma for a while as I watched. A bit later on there was a huge bang from down in the valley, whatever it was caused quite a cloud of dust and smoke. There were no sirens afterwards so maybe it was from the quarry. After all the cleaning of the corridors it is now possible for A to use her rollerblades inside and she had a lot of fun riding up and down them and then later on went onto the balcony for a bit as well; such a benefit of having so much space! She took the puppies for a ride with her briefly and they were very relieved when she put them back down again. Puppies aren't meant to roll! We have spent less time than you would have thought sat on the balcony, however, as the flies have been at plague levels. I've ordered a large (6m x 3m) marquee with mosquito netting sides which we will be putting up for when my parents are here so we can eat meals out there again; it's so frustrating to be inundated with buzzing things trying to get in the food.

Why did the chicken cross the road...

Mother with her babies

Thelma checking out the peeping thing

All the veg is home grown

The next exciting thing about this week is we have let the new chicks loose on the land, which involved letting Kit out with her ex-flock-mates who have, since she was separated, developed a new pecking order. The first attempt resulted in much fighting and A having to beat the two birds apart with a tin cup (and also prevent Louise getting involved in the scrap, as she loves a good scrap that one) however no camera was rolling for this. The next time we tried it was massively boring and everyone just got along, apart from one duck lunge. Since then they have happily been exploring, following Kit around, and being ignored by the rest of our flock. It's so lovely to watch them run and fly and they have even started chasing the puppies. We may end up keeping a cockerel and beginning to breed chickens for our freezer; it's been quite a lovely thing to have the young and this would bring us one step closer to being able to support ourselves off our own land. The meal picture shows how close we are right now; only the meat was not produced from our garden (and the tomato was just SO amazingly tasty it was almost a joke the pleasure noises we made as we ate it).

Lots of plums ready for harvesting

Up the ladder and checking for insect damage

The first batch, processed the slow old way

An evening harvest, with A up the ladder

That evening harvest was very productive; 6kg of fruit!

While we're on about harvest let's get to the point of the title of this blog. The plum trees, after producing basically nothing last year, are laden with fruit this year and we have been out a couple of times with our ladder and harvest bag collecting much fruit for me to preserve into jams and chutneys. We've collected so much that we haven't been out in the past day or so while I process those that we have in the fridges. I'm hoping A makes the lovely plum sauce to go with the crispy duck and if so I'll get her to put the recipe onto the recipe page of this blog. We have spent so much time taking the stones out of this harvest (sped up by A finding the pipper bit on our garlic crusher!) and we're only half way through the second batch now. I can't wait to get preserving, though.

Very proud that I've finally finished this task

A cleaning the dust off the storage in the garage

Shifted into place in the garage

Lovely wildflowers in the kitchen

The Eid cake for our neighbours

It was a productive weekend to go with all this harvesting. I finally found some motivation to get back into the Men's Room and Gym and finish off all the electrical work, which I have done. We now have lights and plugs in both rooms and now I can make a start clearing the workshop in preparation for it being renovated and with that the last room in the house will be completed. A was in the garage giving the units I picked up from the other old school last week a good clean out and now they are ready for me to use for storing empty jam jars. It's too hot in there to keep the preserves and jams, though, as the flat roof soaks up the heat; I'm going to have to think again about them I think. A gathered together a load of lovely wild flowers from around the land to decorate the kitchen with and we also spent a bit of time cleaning and tidying in preparation for our guests next week. We're very nearly ready for them. Eid was this weekend also so A baked a cake for the neighbours and then we went over and sat with them and some other villagers for a very nice half hour or so having a chat and enjoying the welcome we continue to receive from these wonderful people.

Swift by name and by nature

Sassy stretching out in the shade

Lettuce growing well

The snakeskin where it was discovered

Thelma is VERY unhappy with the snakeskin

Shortly after this she bit it

Dragonfly briefly settled

And so we reach the final paragraph of this update and it is a varied one as often happens. First of all a picture of a swift flying past (at great speed) the other day; we don't often see these around here, being plagued with swallows, but there were about four or five flying around for quite a long time and with the sports mode on my camera I was able to capture a not-terrible picture. Sassy has still not climbed right out of her run over the steps but she is enjoying us being on the balcony a little more and giving her company. The heat is proving a slight problem, however, and she does move around to find the shade through the morning before the sun goes behind the house. My lettuce are coming on OK, recovering from getting scorched last week sat on the front. We have moved them onto the balcony and now they get good sun in the morning but don't get overwhelmed by the midday and early afternoon blast. Finally just now we heard the puppies barking and barking outside so went to check if they'd maybe found a lizard, baby bird or tortoise. It was none of these things but a very fresh looking snake skin, scraped off on a stone leading to a cave under our patio. Interesting. They were NOT happy and barked at it a lot, even following me to the compost where I threw it in. That is a big snake and I hope it doesn't cause problems. While down there I spotted a beautiful dragonfly flitting around and got a slightly blurry photograph for you all.

So there you have it; there's lots of stuff to be done between now and next week when the 'rents arrive and I'm also super busy with work so hopefully it'll get done. A has been busy today, back to her day job, so we'll probably end up working hard through the forecast heatwave at the weekend. We shall see. Thanks for reading, as always.