12 July 2010
We have various interesting animals around this summer. Well, the snake community – larger than I’ve ever seen before – isn’t necessary interesting. In fact, it’s rather dull, in the sense that I wish it would go away.
There’s a great big one which lurks up by the well. And I saw two enormous things in such a rush to squeeze away from me and through a very small hole leading under the chicken house that they kind of got tangled up. It would have been quite funny had they not been snakes. Then a small one wiggled away swiftly from beneath the bench outside the window at the end of the living room when I went out there yesterday morning to hang the washing out. Then L reported spotting a huge beast (boys only ever see huge beasts) down in the field this morning when he was dragging wood up from where he’d been pruning the field maple.
To avoid this, I have made what the uninformed might think were mosquito nets for all the downstairs windows. In fact, they are snake and feral cat nets. (The latter were constantly creeping into the house last summer and were, I presume, responsible for the extremely unpleasant appearance of fleas in our bed. That took a lot of beating and hoovering to deal with.)
It was horribly damaged by the blizzard in March but is looking splendid nonetheless. We took visiting English friends who were completely enchanted. The view over the Val d’Orcia at this busy golden harvesting time of year is. Quite frankly, I can’t think of a word.
This afternoon’s rain means, of course, that Vittorio has yet another excuse not to come and cut our field. He brought Joe’s tractor across and cut the terraces, so that at least is more or less under control. And he sent one of his taciturn friends down to attack the banks with a strimmer, so they too are looking neater. (My lovely wildflower array at the top of the bank by my office is now a bare edge-of-cliff affair. Necessary, I guess, because it would have died off pretty soon and probably harboured even more snakes… but sad all the same.) But the bottom field is a dry (now not-so-dry) matted mess and desperately needs cutting and mulching. He wouldn’t do it ten days ago because, he said, there was too much fresh sticky new grass underneath. Now there’ll be soggy matted old grass everywhere. Hey ho.
Up in the vegetable garden, things are still progressing very oddly. It’s like, they didn’t grow because it was too damp and cold; then they didn’t grow because it was far too hot and they couldn’t be bothered. The tallest tomatoes are only about one metre high. They have fruit on them, but not much and not nearly ready. Spinach just refuses point blank to come up. The lettuces are fine, though threatening to bolt. I’ve pulled my onions and some of them would win prizes in shows: quite immense. Once again though, I regret not having planted more. They’re hanging up to dry in the chicken house now, but won’t last us more than a few months. I’m not sure, either, whether I’ve done enough garlic. Last year’s glut (we still have lots, though more and more of the heads are turning to mildew now) made me conservative. Nice big heads though.
I’ve been trying nettle fertilizer. People rave about it. French gardens survive on nothing else. Fill a bin with nettles, cover with water and steep for four weeks or so. You can keep on chucking in nettles and adding water all summer as you use it. Miraculous they say. Incredibly balanced. Powerful. Feeds roots. Feeds leaves. Boosts plants’ immune systems. Combats insects. Mix one part nettle juice to ten parts water, and apply – as foliar spray or straight on to the ground. A little smelly I read. My God. It reeks like an open sewer in the summer sun in Calcutta, with a few dead sacred cows thrown in. Great crowds of flies descend on me as I swish it about: they clearly think there’s a rotting carcass to feast on. It certainly smells that way. And the stronger the stuff gets, the longer the stink lingers. Is is doing any good? Well, things look healthy-ish – not big, but healthy-ish – I guess. But they did anyway, even before I started. And it certainly doesn’t seem to have speeded things up. I’ve been applying every Sunday evening, as a kind of penance. But yesterday I just couldn’t bring myself to take the lid off the bin. That bad.
I’ve mulched my tomatoes with minced up comfrey though. And I’m thinking I should do the same to the courgettes. So much of the fruit seems to be suffering from bottom-end rot.
17 July
And still they conspire to make my flesh creep. First the snake sitting right outside the back door when Lee opened up there the other day, which disappeared swiftly down the grate at the bottom of the overflow pipe which comes down from our terrace. I have spent quite some time trying to work out where it could creep from there: back along the pipe which leads into the sump in the air passage behind the house? And thence beneath the door and into L’s cellar and into the house? I don’t know.
And then there was the discovery of this year’s freshly sloughed-off skin. There's always one. Last year it was neatly laid out on the lawn with one end sticking into a hole low down in the chicken house wall. The year before it was dangling from a rafter in the part of the chicken house where we keep the bikes. This year?
Our delightful little present was left neatly laid out between two rows of tiles on the pizza oven roof. Right beside the terrace outside our bedroom. I have opened the doors out on to the terrace very gingerly ever since.