Swift Half update - 24th August 2010

• Since we've been away, the UK has obviously had a fair amount of rain as our garden (which has only needed to be mown twice all summer thanks to a ridiculously dry May and June) got completely overgrown again!
• Not that the girls (Couven and Cutlery, our hens) seem to mind!
• Malu and Yala (our cats - now one year old - we missed their birthday on August 10th) may have a couple of "cat colds" from the cattery - another reason never to take them back to that place. NB - a tip for you. Give the "Kings Cattery" in Binfield, Berks, not a penny of your business. That all said, it is a delight to have our spostles back again, and quite obviously pretty nice for them too (they won't leave us alone!)
• Good crop of pears on our trees - we shall harvest them all within a fortnight.
• Runner beans doing well - as are the damsons (that crop's over now).
• HUGE potato crop - and GINORMOUS potatos in the crop too (strange, as Mr.and Mrs.T next door but one have got a tiny crop - maybe a dozen or so of very, very small tatties). Must have been all my watering during the bone-dry May and June which saw our potatoes swell into monsters!
• No real raspberries as yet (VERY late) but a huge crop of elderberries which the pigeons like!
• All the swifts and swallows gone of course. I saw half a dozen Common Swifts on Kefalonia, on August 11th, all flying south for the winter - the last date I will see Swifts this year.
• Very blustery, showery conditions since we got back (we hear thats what the UK had during our summer hols in the med also).
• Loads of bats at dusk -feeding up before the nights get long and cold.
• One large (Hawker I think) dragonfly oochering around the garden.
• Fox poo in evidence -and I've seen one of the (not so) young cubs in daylight now.
• Female sparrowhawk landed on shed and woodpecker attractor the day I got back - nice welcome committee for me!
• Pond full of blanketweed and little evidence of frogs - but I'm sure they're still there, like the newts.
• Our one and only sunflower which we planted in the summer fruited magnificently during our Greek holiday - and has attracted the larger bumblebees - includind a tree bumblebee (photo below). What a result from our sunflower!
• Proposed projects for the autumn, in the garden - fun with Jays and monkey nuts - I'm going to try and devise some intelligence tests for them.