It was a damp start to the first day of the month; but it soon brightened with a stiff breeze clearing the skies, it was a pattern that was to continue for about two weeks. The river level was slowly dropping back to around the one-foot mark by the 10th before it started to rise again.
Along the river banks the fruit trees have struggled a bit this year with some of the apple trees having very little fruit on them!
The brambles are at their best just now, I`ve stopped the tractor a couple of times while out cutting to get a pick of them for a crumble
I think it will not be long before we start picking the sloes again for making our annual batch of sloe gin.
Now that it is getting a bit cooler the growth rate of the grass has slowed up a bit, which frees up a bit of time for some of the other jobs that always need to be seen too.
Nearer the end of the month there were some warmer spells during parts of the days when the bees and butterflies were out in big numbers
I was surprised to see how active they were on the flowering knotweed! Normally there is not much activity about them but this month they were covered with bees and other insects. The butterflies always enjoy the buddleia, but we were seeing a lot of them on the flowering mint in some areas too.
It was good to see the river from another angle further down the estuary earlier in the month
when I had a trip down to Newport with an outboard engine that needed some repair, it is a wide river when you see the expanse of the bridges.
By the 27th the river level had peaked about the 3ft 6”mark above summer level and then it started to slowly drop back again; and as the month drew to a close on a dry calm mild day the river level was back sitting around the two foot mark.
Dago