This past week has been a bit of a strange one for me. I felt tired. Not physically tired, but internally exhausted and listless. Maybe it was the weather? It’s been storming a lot here and that has brought a heaviness in the atmosphere that’s been oppressive.
The last time I updated you folks, I was pushing through before the rain. I hadn’t planned on swinging the hoe-pick (mattock hoe to all those who don’t like my homemade name for this!) but I found myself doing so. There was something about allowing the weeds and rushes to grow more when I wanted them out that just spurred me on, I think!
Since then, It’s been raining. It’s stopped for a few hours each day, but really it’s been raining for most of the time. When it hasn’t been raining, the midges and cleggs (horseflies) have been out.
You know, when I first moved to Scotland I was in awe of the outdoors. I felt like I was always in a movie setting. There were amazing hills and mountains covered in trees – sometimes just heather- there were cows and sheep, beautiful stone houses, stone walls and hedgerows everywhere. Then I got a tick bite. And then, I experienced the horrors of midges and cleggs.
Sigh.
I had no idea how much worse midges and cleggs could be compared to mosquitoes. Let me tell you, they are infinitely worse. Midges descend in a cloud and invade every mm of your exposed skin and make you want to run and jump in a lake like you see in those ridiculous movie scenes. Trust me, they’re not ridiculous scenes! Cleggs are horseflies, a type of gadfly. These are horrific beasties designed to bite through an animal’s hide. Imagine what that does to much thinner, human skin. It really hurts, and swells, and invades the pain receptors. Horrific doesn’t do these bites justice.
Midges and cleggs were the beasties I was trying to avoid, this week of prolonged rainfall and thunderstorms. I feel like I’ve let a week go by and not honoured the time with as much outdoor work as I would have liked to have done. I have managed to pot on most of my seedlings ready for this, from their seedling trays to individual pots. I got 157 done. I did my California poppy, Angel’s Choir poppy, Echium and Echinacea; but I didn’t manage to do my Stocks. I also planted another wave of carrot seeds and sowed my first sowing of Courgette (Zuchinni) seeds. These are in preparation for succession planting in my potato patch which had first-earlies sown in mid April.
I did some housekeeping around the onion and carrot patches as well. I hadn’t been that happy with the wood edging and how it was sitting, so I thought that before the rain came I’d try to dig a bit around the edge and settle the timber into the patch a bit more. I had to use a saw in the turf for this but over the course of two days I got it done. It’s not settled perfectly, but that’s because I refused to damage the roots from the nearby Rowan tree and Rhododendron that I discovered were in the way. But as the timber is settled in place better it means that the upkeep around those patches will be much easier in the future.
It’s that upkeep that led to my Clegg bite yesterday. There was a break in the rain that lasted for an evening and a morning. So I decided to cut the grass.
Cutting grass on this croft is a big task. I don’t do the entire croft, I don’t even do the entire area fenced off for personal household use, it would take hours and hours… and HOURS! Yesterday, I managed to do the front lawn, the area by the rubble heap and the rose hedge (where I had to dig the drain in spring, remember that story?), the path through the cluster of flower beds to the side of the house, and then I had to do about a third of the area behind the house where the veg patches are located. I didn’t finish. I got all the important bits done to access all the patches etc but I didn’t do what I’d hoped to have done before the rain came down again. And it was right at the end that the wee beastie got me! I really hate midges and cleggs!
So I feel really blah about what I was able to do this past week. I’m disappointed.
But, on the other hand some gems have been thrown up because of the rainfall and so I have some pictures of the beauty that has sprung up. I hope you enjoy them. I have high hopes for this coming week, so fingers crossed.
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