Diary: The garden in August 2000

On the 15th on an unpromising start to the day the afternoon became bright and sunny. Opportunity was taken for a walk around the lanes. My first stopping place was at a pipe outlet draining fields into a stream, popular with our children when they were small! This, over the years, has been a good indicator of the water regime. Today water was flowing strongly out of the pipe indicating that the soils were saturated and recent rainfalls were running off the ground. In some summers there is barely a trickle, but not this one. The barley in the field, I have previously described, has been harvested but the harvester lies temporarily abandoned in a corner. The cereals have been ready to harvest for a while but the wet weather has largely held up this work. In recent years, with the earlier maturing varieties available, harvests have been getting earlier. This year it will be somewhat later but not as late as September or even early October in a really poor year in the past. I can remember as a boy visiting on several occasions a farm in Gower to 'help' when the corn was cut, by reaper and binder, and the sheaves stood on the field in stooks to dry. These were then collected, often by horsedrawn wagon, and put in a corn-rick with a thatched straw roof to keep it dry. There it stood until the mobile steam-driven thrashing machine visited, later in the year, to remove the ears from the straw. All these events were, it seems, something that lots of people were closely involved in at the time. Today with modern machinery 'help' is not required and involvement is noting the event in a diary. This year's harvest was spread over several weeks, as drier weather permitted, in what was a very wet month. Further along the lane I saw a flock of about 100 sparrows, they were noisily darting to and fro a hedge bordering the harvested and the next unharvested field. Sparrows do flock up in the summer months, I have seen flocks of 20-30 earlier but this is the largest seen this year. Sparrows have disappeared from the garden; this is where they must be! No doubt some will be back later in the year when supplies of seeds run low in the fields and along the hedgerows. At present there is plenty of seed available including grasses, plantains, cow parsley and dock. In flower was the greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa that was attracting some small tortoiseshell butterflies. Some of the berries on hawthorn were already turning red but I could not find any sloes. This is the second year that sloes have failed to form hereabouts. Blackberries are starting to ripen; a few sample berries proved delicious! Across the lane from the sparrows the rooks (200 or more) were hunting over the pastures.

It was back to the damp and muggy weather on the 16th. This weather has brought on fungal attacks in the greenhouse and the garden. Tomato leaves affected by Botrytis have been cut off and as much air given as possible to minimise its spread. Despite this the tomatoes are cropping well at the moment. There is the first sign of the Black Hamburg grapes beginning to ripen. On the vegetable plot there is already sign of a little damage to potato leaves by blight. The sweet peas have passed their best. They are now at the top of their support and have got small and few in number. Usually they continue at least until the end of the month, but not this year, and will be missed as cut flowers for the house. We have not had the profusion of roses that we would have liked to see on the Zephirene Drouhin this year. It has not repeated as well as other years. But the new roses, The Herbalist and Cottage Rose have been doing quite well.

With most of the grain harvest completed the fields and roads are becoming quieter as combine harvesters are put away for another year. Grass has been mown for silage, wilted then gathered into big bales and covered with black polythene. More recently some grass has been dried for hay, usually these days in large bales but there are still quite a lot of small rectangular bales being made in parts of the island. The field to the northeast of the garden, beyond the greenhouse and wood, has recently been cut for hay, as it has been turned to dry on a sunny day the pleasant sweet smell was drifting across on a gentle breeze. Some days later the aroma was not as pleasant when manure was spread! Later sheep were returned to graze, for most of the summer they have been in far off fields. The other 2 fields near the garden have continued to have cattle. Completion of the grain harvests leaves many fields standing bare of crops, for a while, before autumn ploughing begins. This is the time of year that Canada geese come to graze the stubbled fields. They frequently fly over the garden and we hear them coming, before we see them, with their familiar honking calls as they fly over in V formation. Sometimes they are in small groups of 10-15 birds but we have seen 30 or more at a time. They have been flying over since the beginning of the month, often in late afternoon or evening and settle on fields just to the southeast of here. In the morning they fly off again probably to the estuaries and waterways around Anglesey. One such estuary is at Malltraeth and along its banks is a favourite walk. On the southern side is Newborough Forest that borders Newborough (Warren) National Nature Reserve, an important sand dune system. Both were the same sand dunes part of which was forested before, what was left, was declared an NNR shortly after the 1947 Countryside Act. The walk is along a strip of land between the forest and the shore. At certain times of the tide interesting birds, including Canada geese, can be seen and the forest area is home to many ravens. The narrow strip of vegetation, between forest and salt marsh, is very interesting as it is ungrazed meadow containing many plant species. This supports a good number of insects and butterflies. This year has been very good for butterflies and, as well as the small common blue, we have been seeing a large number of clouded yellow, several gatekeepers and small tortoiseshells. Visits on sunny days between the 20th and 29th were no exception. The clouded yellow is a southern European species that is a strong migrant. In spring it flies north and can reach Britain by June, perhaps assisted by air-flows from the south; there have been several instances this year that has resulted in deposition of Saharan dust (see Weather diary). Arriving in Britain by June it can establish a late brood that flies in August. We have seen them here several times in the last 5 years and, although chances of them surviving resident as a result of recent warm years must be small, it is tempting to think that a few may survive overwinter! One, possibly two yellow butterflies looked darker with a flush of orange, and a little larger. These were very difficult, as were the clouded yellow, to get a close look and photograph with wings open, I missed a good shot by seconds. They looked like the Cleopatra that occurs in north Africa and southern Europe. Again in view of the episodes of Saharan dust this year it is possible that with an assisted passage they were Cleopatras! There were several gatekeepers around as well and we had a good view of them feeding on Calluna that was in flower. This is another southern species and it is very good to see them so far north as Anglesey. The swallows have already begun to line up on overhead cables, a 100 or more were seen near Brynsiencyn, in preparation for their migration south for the winter. It will be a few days before they set off, but we will one-day find they are no longer around. It will be a long journey for them with many hazards to overcome; it will be a long wait for us before we welcome them again next year.